Cadence of the Leaves
by Katkid
Summary: When Konoha suffers a violent revolution it's up to a small band of survivors to put things right. But saving a shinobi village can be complicated when you have to deal with life-and-death decisions, alliances, traitors and maybe even a little romance.
1. Blood Sun

CHAPTER ONE

Sasuke Uchiha woke up with fire in his mouth. Sweat was dribbling down his back and neck. Matting his hair against his head. Soaking his sheets; the soft, blue sheets that were tangled around his body like a tight cocoon. Hot—it was so hot.Fire burning muscle and bones, skin boiling hot.

His shaking hands _(why did his fingers feel so clumsy?) _fumbled with the hem of his shirt as he tried to pull it up and over his head. The fabric hitched under his arms. And the fire was still burning him. He wanted to fall into a glacial lake and drown himself.

He sat up and felt his head keep rising to hover far above his shoulders like a heavy balloon on a string. Dizzying. Sickening. He sucked in a breath that stopped somewhere between his mouth and lungs and came back in an explosion of phlegm-choked hacking. Back and guts wrenching, lungs working to breathe _(gag) _between the percussive convulsions. There were black shadows swimming in front of his eyes and through the haze he wondered whether he was about to lose consciousness. Then he was slouched forward and gasping with a steely taste in his mouth.

There was something damp in his hands. _The shirt? _He looked at the bunched fabric in his hands. Yes. The shirt. He didn't remember taking it off. The word delirium crept into his head and he understood that he was sick; bad sick, he knew it. Knew he needed a hospital. Knew….

It was still so _hot. _He wanted to untangle himself from the sheets but his legs were a thousand miles away and made of marble and—and…. _THUD. _He rolled off the edge off the bed and onto the hard floor, taking the sheets with him. The impact bounced off the back of his swollen eyes and then from ear to ear as it echoed in his head. The floor pitched under him. A hot knife dug into his belly and twisted against the sensory overload, making him retch, making him choke, making him—

—His hands were gripping the doorframe. Was it the doorframe to the bathroom? No…he was still in his bedroom, wasn't he? Was he?There was a mixture of saliva and stomach acid in his mouth. He spat it out. It dribbled down his chin and onto his chest.

The floor was cool against his flaming cheek. He wanted to lay that way forever, with his cheek pressed against the wood floor's comforting surface. Then he remembered. _Get help, get help, get help…. _"Help," he whispered. His voice was a low rasp that sandpapered his throat.

He crawled forward an inch…two…out of the room…down the hall…and then his stomach rebelled and he retched. There was a coppery taste in his mouth that wouldn't go away. It hurt—hurt to breathe. His quivering arms snapped at the elbows under his own body weight, sending him sprawling on the ground.

_Lungs straining, inhale._

He was floating on a wave of dark water, swelling up and down, up…down…. Sasuke closed his eyes, letting the darkness claim him.

_Breathe in…._

_Breathe…out…._

* * *

It began no different from any of the hundreds of Tuesdays Sakura Haruno had lived through. Her alarm clock went off at 6:00 am. She rolled out of bed, got dressed, ate a light breakfast. Her mother scolded her, trying to convince her to eat more. She retreated to the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face without eating another bite. _I've got to be careful. I'm already a heifer compared to Ino and now she's on a diet…no way am I going to lose to her!_

She stepped outside at 6:30 and shivered. It was well past the time of year for snow, but a cold night could still bring out a gray sheen of frost over grass and trees. Even though the sky was thick with lint-colored clouds, she decided to make do without going back for a jacket. _It would only get in the way later, _she thought as she set off. _Besides, maybe the cold will wake me up a little more. Why do I even bother to show up early when Kakashi is always late? There's no reason for it._

But whether or not she was willing to acknowledge it, she had always had a reason for being the first to arrive at the bridge where they met for their training exercises. At first it had been for the sake of her dizzying crush on her teammate, Sasuke Uchiha. After all, what better opportunity to catch the boy alone could there be? From day one she'd had it all worked out in her head.

The first rays of rich, sunlight would just be coming into view above the Hokage monument when Sasuke arrived to find her standing ever-so-cooly at the center of the wooden bridge. The sun would catch her forehead protector just right and he would suddenly be captivated by her creamy skin and her deep green eyes. As he walked to meet her a puff of wind would stir up her hair, just to seal the deal, and then he would say, "Good morning, Sakura." She would pretend that she hadn't even seen him coming, but then they would start to talk, and small talk would lead to a conversation, which would lead to a trembling request for a date (from him of course!), and then…then…then!She'd never made it past that "then", even in her imagination, because she soon discovered that although Sasuke Uchiha was strong, mysterious, and absolutely gorgeous, a morning person was something he was not.

Hopeless as it was, she'd held on to that fantasy right up until their team was split by order of the Hokage herself. The order had come after a nasty fight between Sasuke and Naruto that took place on the hospital roof just over a month ago. Tsunade had mumbled something about being "damned if history was going to repeat itself" which Sakura couldn't figure out for the life of her and that was that. The next day Sasuke was training under the eye of Kakashi while Naruto trained with Jiraiya and Sakura began her instruction under Tsunade.

On Kakashi's insistence, they were allowed to meet and train together as a team once a week. Tsunade's training kept Sakura so busy that she rarely saw either of the boys outside of these weekly sessions. She could have lived with this if not for the feeling that something had broken between the three of them that would never be fixed. Whenever the boys were within a fifty-meter radius of each other Naruto would become stiff and coldly polite while Sasuke simply refused to speak at all. Sakura felt as though she had to handle the two of them with kid gloves just to avoid having a repeat of the fight that had started it all. At any rate, it gave her a new reason to arrive at their meeting place first.

_I don't even want to think about what would happen if those two were alone for longer than a couple of seconds, _she thought as she passed the Yamanaka flower shop. She stopped to glance up to the dark window that belonged to Ino's room on the second floor of the building. _I don't understand why her team gets along so well while mine…. When did things get this bad?_

She walked on with a sigh and tried to pinpoint what could have caused the rivalry between the two boys to sour. _Was it the chuunin exams? _She shook her head. _Even though Sasuke got that curse seal on his neck, he was almost starting to treat Naruto like a friend. He started acting strange after Tsunade healed him, so it must have been something before that…but what? Was it—_

She never finished her thought because that was when the world went red. The whitewashed walls of the buildings on either side of her were the color of baked adobe, the road was mahogany-red—even her skin had taken on a pinkish hue. It looked as though a giant had coated everything in a layer of blood with an oversize paintbrush. Her first thought was, _genjutsu? _Then she looked to the Hokage monument and saw something that would never fade from her memory.

The sun was throwing its first light over the crest of the stone monument, and it was a violent red that seemed to burn the sky. Sakura stood with her mouth gaping open. The heavy clouds were textured hanks of cotton stained with old blood, and the sun was a furious eye glaring murder. "Sh-sharingan?" she stammered.

A feeling of acute unease settled in the pit of her stomach—a feeling that something that was just out of view was very _wrong._ Everything was so still it was as though she was the last living soul on earth. She swept her gaze around the abandoned street. She wanted to see somebody—_anybody. _Even an enemy ninja would do. The road was empty. Her breath choked in the back of her throat in a small whimper. Then she ran.

She ran without paying any mind to where she was going or what she was doing. All she knew was that she needed to see somebody _alive _so she could know that she wasn't alone under that fiery eye's leer. And all the while that feeling of wrongness gnawed more insistent.

When the bridge came into view, she came to a dead halt. Standing there with the sun's red light tinting his skin in an ugly parody of a sunburn was Naruto Uzumaki. His back was to her; she couldn't see his face. For one mind-lurching instant she thought, _He killed Sasuke._ Then she was walking forward with her legs trembling under her.

He jumped when she reached the bridge and her hollow footsteps echoed off the pink-stained water below. "Sakura," he whispered, and she could tell from the quiver in his voice that he was just as unsettled as she was.

They stood frozen in time until the light changed; the red fading to pink, and then to the dull, colorless light that comes on mornings choked with clouds. The process only took seconds, but it seemed as though they were standing there for a very long time before Naruto tittered hoarsely and croaked, "What was that?"

"I don't know…." She hugged her arms to her chest to hide her shivering while Naruto looked down at the wood planks of the bridge. Finally, it occurred to her to say something to try and restore some sense of normalcy to the situation. "What are you doing here so early?" She flinched. Her voice still sounded high and tight.

Naruto shrugged. "I thought I'd come early. We only get to see each other once a week now, you know."

"Yeah. I know. So how long do you think Kakashi is going to make us wait today?"

"I don't know. Not too long, I hope. The less time we have to stand around waiting for him with jerkface the better, right?" Sakura gave him a warning frown, but he grinned wide enough to narrow his eyes into slits and added, "Hey, you think maybe Sasuke won't show today? Like maybe he got sick or something? Then it'd be just me and you. Oh, and Kakashi."

"Naruto, that's not funny."

His smile never wavered. "Who says I was joking? Ahahaha—ow!" He trailed off his cackling to rub at his shoulder and give Sakura a look of exaggerated hurt. "What was that for?"

"You know perfectly well what it was for!" she snapped. Inside she felt like giggling with relief. This—all of it—Naruto badmouthing Sasuke, Sakura lecturing or punching him in retaliation…it was so normal, so safe. It was enough to remind her that Naruto was still Naruto, regardless of blood sunrises or uneasy feelings. _And if Naruto is still Naruto, then Sasuke is still Sasuke. Nothing's changed, _she thought.

"But _Sakura, _wouldn't it be nice to get some attention from Kakashi for a change? Seriously, Sasuke's the only one he ever pays any attention to anymore!"

"That's because Sasuke is his only full-time student now, Naruto!" she snarled back. "What do you expect?" Sakura felt the knots her stomach had twisted into begin to loosen as the argument continued. Arguments between the two of them—especially arguments that concerned their dark-haired teammate—were so predictable they might as well be reading lines from a script. It was exactly what she had needed. _Not that I'd ever tell him that, _she thought.

Several minutes later, Naruto was in the middle of an impressive monologue detailing everything that they could do without "that bigheaded fun-killer" there to stop them. He had just reached the topic of lunch ("We could eat at Ichiraku and Kakashi would totally treat us because it's way cheaper with just you and me!") when their sensei arrived. Naruto didn't miss a beat. He trailed off his rant about how Sasuke "has some kind of weird aversion to eating good food" to scream, "YOU'RE LATE AND YOU'RE TREATING US TO ICHIRAKU BECAUSE SAKURA AND I SAID SO!"

Although most of Kakashi's face was obscured beneath his mask and forehead protector, Sakura was able to imagine the smile on his face from the way his visible eye lit with a childlike innocence. "Ichiraku sounds delicious, but I'm afraid I left all of my ramen money at home in my sock drawer today. And I believe I'm on time."

Naruto shouted, "LIAR!" and then, once the meaning of his sensei's words sank in, muttered, "No, wait a second…."

Sakura had opened her mouth to shout along with Naruto, expecting to hear another of Kakashi's outlandish excuses for his tardiness. She caught herself only just in time and stammered, "You…you really _are _on time today."

Kakashi looked at Naruto, who was blinking with confusion and then turned his attention to Sakura. Sakura belatedly realized that her mouth was gawping open and closed it with her cheeks burning pink. "If it's going to affect the two of you this badly, I'll make sure it never happens again," said Kakashi. "And it looks like we're missing Sasuke."

The feeling of foreboding that had retreated to the back of Sakura's mind came roaring back, stronger than ever. Kakashi's tone had been nonchalant, but to Sakura's ears it was _too _bright; _too _unconcerned.

Beside her, Naruto rolled his eyes and groaned, "Oh, _him? _He probably decided he's too cool to be seen hanging around with us mortals anymore. Can't we just start without him?"

Sakura balled her hands into angry fists, but she was so distracted she didn't even send him so much as a glare. She thought she had seen a troubled expression flicker across Kakashi's face. _Does he feel it, too?_ she wondered.

"I'm afraid that's not an option, Naruto," Kakashi replied, clapping his hand on top of the blonde's head to silence his scathing remarks. "After all, you meet with me to train as a three-man team. You can't practice three-man tactics with only two people. We're just going to have to make a detour to pick up Sasuke on our way to the training grounds."

Sakura felt her stomach clench as she followed behind Kakashi and Naruto. Again, Kakashi's tone had been too detached and airy, as though he was trying to convince himself as well as the two of them. Her unease sharpened when she realized that Kakashi was walking so quickly that she and Naruto were forced to trot to keep up. _If there's nothing to worry about, _she thought, _why is he in such a hurry?_ Trying her best to echo Kakashi's carefully measured air of indifference, she said, "Is something wrong, Kakashi?"

The reply was slow in coming, and it did little to calm her jumping nerves. "Sasuke is required to report to both the Hokage and myself if he's going to miss training for any reason. He's aware of this, and he knows that if he refuses to abide by that rule there will be consequences."

"Eh? Consequences? So he's in trouble?"

Kakashi sighed. "We'll see, Naruto."

Naruto let out a low chuckle. "Sasuke's in trouble, Sasuke's in trouble," he crowed. Although he was singing the mocking chorus at the top of the lungs, Sakura was so worried that it registered as nothing more than a buzzing in her ears. No matter how hard she tried not to think about it, the image of the Sharingan-red sun rising above the Hokage monument continued to burn in her mind like a warning flare. By the time they were standing in front of Sasuke's door she felt like she was being scrutinized from the inside out by a furious red eye.

_Tok, tok, tok! _The sound of knuckles rapping on wood jolted her back to reality. She let out a startled yelp, and then hurried to compose herself as Kakashi announced, "Sasuke, this is your wake-up call. Open up!"

Sakura held her breath, waiting to see the dark-haired boy open the door with a grumbled apology. There was no answer. Beside her, Naruto stirred and whispered, "Hey, Sakura, how come you're shaking? Are you all right?"

She cast an anxious glance to Kakashi as he knocked again, pounding loud enough to wake even the heaviest of sleepers. "I…it's—it's stupid, really, but I'm afraid that something might have happened to Sasuke."

"What, like something bad?"

"I don't know. It's just…the way the sun came up red like that. Didn't that feel _wrong _to you?"

The ever-present glimmer of mischief disappeared from his eyes and he shuddered. "Ugh, don't remind me. That was creepy! You think it means that there's something wrong with Sasuke?"

A tendril of embarrassment curled through her. Hearing them voiced so plainly, her suspicions seemed ridiculously childish; nothing more than the product of an overactive imagination at work. "It just gave me a bad feeling, OK? That's all!" She crossed her arms over her chest and turned away with a huff.

"OK, OK. I didn't mean to make you mad. Sorry."

Sakura wasn't sure whether to offer a scathing reply or say nothing at all. Before she could make up her mind, Kakashi said, "He's not answering, which means that I'm going to have to go inside. You two wait here in case he comes to the door; I'm going to run downstairs and pick up the spare key."

There was a long, heavy silence after Kakashi left them alone. When Naruto finally broke it, his voice was hollow. "Do you really think that something bad happened to Sasuke?"

She swallowed hard past the lump in her throat. "I don't know. I—"

"That jerk."

"What?"

"That _jerk! _I bet he just doesn't want to open the door because he knows we're out here." The edges of his mouth edged up into a crooked grin. "Heh. I'll show him!"

"Naruto, what are you…." She trailed off as she recognized the hand seal he was forming. _Shadow clone? What's he planning to do with that? _Her eyes went wide when she realized that the clone was sculpting a mass of blue chakra into a concentrated ball of spinning energy in the boy's hand. "Naruto, don't you _dare!" _she screeched.

Naruto didn't seem to hear her furious warning. With a jubilant cry of "Rasengan!" he leaped forward and smashed his glowing fist into the door. The cheap apartment door juddered with the force of the blow and Sakura saw a web of deep cracks rip through its frame before it splintered and fell into a heap of rubble in the doorway.

_I see, _she thought, waving away a cloud of dust from the wreckage. _He's worried, too. Leave it to Naruto to break something when he's upset. Sasuke's not going to be happy. _Sakura stood on tiptoe and craned her neck to see into the apartment. Between Naruto and the wreckage of the door blocking the view, she could see only enough to know that the room beyond was utterly dark and still, as though it was holding its breath.

"Hey, Sasuke! Are you—" Naruto's words caught in his throat, and a short, sharp gasp came out instead.

Sakura's head swam with worry. "What? What is it?" she demanded in a hysterical squeak. She jumped up and down, trying to get a better view.

_"Sasuke!" _Naruto shrieked, leaping over the debris in the doorway and disappearing inside.

She climbed in after him, stumbling over the ruined door in her haste to get inside. There was a moment in which the silence in the hall was stifling. And then Sakura's horrified scream split the air.

* * *

**Author's Notes: **Liked it? Hated it? Click the lovely little review button below and LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!


	2. Discovery

CHAPTER TWO

Kakashi was sick of Sasuke Uchiha. He was sick of accommodating the boy's standoffish personality, and he was sick of trying to satisfy his impatience. He was sick of teaching and re-teaching lessons that seemed to fall on deaf ears. He was sick of hearing all his criticisms and advice dismissed with an emotionless grunt. _("Sasuke, your shuriken are drifting to the left again; remember to compensate." "Hn." "Sasuke, you can't keep relying on that curse seal for a quick power boost."_ _"Hn." "Sasuke, you'll never be satisfied if you allow revenge to consume your life." "Hn.")_ But most of all, Kakashi was sick of the boy's indifference towards his team mates, because even though they were no longer an official three-man team, they were still his fellow Konoha shinobi. And yet, in spite of feeling discouraged, frustrated, and altogether fed up with his student, Kakashi refused to give up hope.

_He's so much like I used to be, _he thought, twiddling the key to Sasuke's apartment between his fingers. _Too much like I used to be. I don't want it to take something as drastic as the death of a comrade to bring him to his senses, but the current situation isn't helping matters. _

Much as he respected the Hokage, he was convinced that separating Sasuke from his team mates had not been the best solution to the now infamous fight atop the hospital roof. After all, how could he possibly learn to value his team mates if he was alienated from them? It was this line of thinking that had led Kakashi to risk penalties of insubordination to dispute the Hokage's decision. In the end, he wondered whether their hastily-driven bargain was worth anything at all.

_It's a shame I couldn't get her to remove any of the other sanctions, _he thought as he began to climb the stairs. _Imposing curfews and random searches isn't going to improve his attitude at all. If anything, it's only going to make him even more distant. At least she's allowing him to work with his team mates once a week. _He snorted with contempt. _For now._

He was halfway up the stairs when he heard the scream. _Sakura, _he thought, and then he was hurtling up the stairs as fast as his legs could go because something in that ear-twisting screech was enough to make his guts wrench. A thousand explanations for what might cause such a scream flashed through his head as he ran. _Sasuke attacked Naruto. Sasuke attacked Sakura. Sasuke and Naruto are fighting again. Somebody's hurt. Naruto's hurt. Sasuke's hurt. Sakura's hurt…._ The only thing he felt certain of as he reached the top of the stairs and started down the hall was that he would no longer need the brass key he had gone downstairs to retrieve.

Kakashi soon discovered that he was correct: the door had been blown off its hinges and reduced to a pile of rubble. He didn't pause to examine the wreckage for any trace of residual chakra. Whether it had been Rasengan or Chidori, the implications were the same. Blood rushing in his temples, he leapt over the pile of splintered wood—and stopped short.

Naruto's orange jacket was the first thing he saw as his eyes adjusted to the dim light in the apartment. He was standing completely still, his posture rigid. His lips were working as though he was trying to speak, but there was no sound coming out and his face was ashen. Sakura was knelt on the floor with her back to Kakashi. Her shoulders were shaking, but Kakashi couldn't tell whether she was trembling or crying or if it was a combination of the two. Both of them were looking at something on the floor. From the angle he was standing, Kakashi couldn't see what they were looking at, but he knew what it was all the same.

A stray bit of what remained of the door snapped under his foot as he took a step forward. Naruto remained frozen in place, but Sakura gave a small jump. Moving as though she was underwater, she turned around and whispered, "I don't…I don't know what—" The rest of her sentence was lost on him because once she shifted her position Kakashi was able to see what she and Naruto had been looking at.

As he had suspected, it was Sasuke. And yet what he saw caught him completely by surprise. The dark-haired boy was huddled on the ground in a shivering heap. He was sweating so badly his hair and clothing stuck wetly against his body. He was lying in a puddle of blood-streaked vomit and Kakashi noted with growing concern that his breathing was choked and irregular, as though a heavy fluid was rattling in his lungs.

"I should know what this is; I'm a med-nin now so I should _know _these things, but I don't know," Sakura babbled. "I've never seen—never even heard of this before and I don't know what to do…."

Kakashi crossed the room and Sakura fell silent. When he reached his students, he placed his hands on Naruto's shoulders and gently maneuvered him out of the way before kneeling down beside the prone Sasuke. Naruto blinked as though only now realizing that Kakashi had arrived and made a choked noise in the back of his throat but said nothing.

From this close, Sasuke looked even worse than Kakashi had first thought. His face was so swollen that Kakashi doubted he could open his eyes, and the ghost of an ugly, blotchy rash discolored much of his exposed skin. Carefully, he took the boy into his arms and stood up. Even through his gloves, Kakashi could feel the heat that radiated from his student's body well enough to know that the fever was dangerously high. What concerned him more was the fact that the vomit was cold and sticky—an indication that Sasuke had been in this condition for a considerable amount of time. _But how long, _he wondered.

He tried to remember whether Sasuke had shown any indication of illness when he had seen him last. _He was quiet yesterday, a little moody. _He shook his head. _In other words he was acting completely normal. Now if it had been Naruto acting that way…._ A low groan prompted him to glance down to the shivering boy in his arms. _Memory-searching can wait. Sasuke needs help now._

"Sakura, Naruto, call the hospital. Tell them we're on our way." _Training—say something about training. _The idea of something as normal as training seemed very out of place in the surreal new reality that had come into being from the second he'd stepped into the darkened apartment. Barely aware of the words as they left his mouth, he said, "Training's canceled for today."

He'd almost made it to the apartment door when Naruto spoke for the first time: "Hey, Kakashi-sensei…he's going to be all right, isn't he?"

Kakashi hesitated, wanting to offer some encouraging words but reluctant to lie. He heard Naruto picking his way towards him over the battered mess of wood on the floor. When he was less than an arm's length away, Naruto sighed and added, "I mean this is _Sasuke _we're talking about here…he'd never let something as lame as getting sick—I mean, he's so _stubborn! _There's _no way!"_

"The doctors know what they're doing," Kakashi finally replied. "They've patched me up plenty of times before, and they'll do everything they can to help Sasuke."

As Kakashi hurried through the door with Sasuke's unconscious form in his arms, he heard Sakura add, "Yeah, Naruto, Konoha's got a great hospital—one of the best." Her tone was falsely cheerful, barely enough to hide her gulped back sobs. Kakashi was almost to the stairs and her voice was very far away when she sniffled, "It might even be number one now that we've got Tsunade."

* * *

Tsunade pursed her lips as she pulled the hospital sheet up over the motionless body of Chouji Akimichi. Now that all of the beeping and whirring monitors had been removed, the crackling of those stiff, white sheets seemed to fill the room. The boy's body was still unnaturally warm; she could feel the heat radiating off of him in waves, even through the sheet. It reminded her of a time many years ago when she had stood beside a radiator long enough to raise blisters on her arm.

She had been six years old. Her family had gotten together to celebrate her father's thirtieth birthday. The house had been packed; there had been nowhere else to stand until she started screaming. Then her mother had come running to dab some ointment on the wound.

_Maybe we should dip him in an ointment bath, _she thought. She dismissed the thought with a shake of her head. She wasn't thinking straight and she knew it. Aching muscles, fatigue, lowered focus—it didn't take a med-nin of her caliber to recognize the signs of sleep deprivation. Even so, sleep was the last thing on her mind.

It occurred to her as she smoothed the sheet over the boy's still face that with his death that the Akimichi clan was extinct. One night. That was all it had taken to wipe out a clan that had been a pillar of Konoha since its founding. Chouza Akimichi had died just after one in the morning and his wife had wasted no time in following him, passing away less than fifteen minutes later. And now the boy.

"It's like the Uchiha massacre all over again," she sighed. But even as the words left her mouth, she knew that there was one vital difference that set the two apart; one that made the Akimichis deaths seem far more sinister: _At least we know how the Uchihas died. The Akimichis…I still have no idea what killed them._

The symptoms were nothing extraordinary. High fever. Productive cough. Vomiting. Progressive skin rash. Rapid chakra depletion. With decades of experience under her belt, Tsunade had seen each of these symptoms hundreds of times before. Finding a diagnosis should have been child's play—but for all her talent and for all her experience, the illness remained undiagnosed.

And now here she was, preparing Chouji Akimichi's body for the morgue. She knew she had to perform an autopsy, knew she had to examine the lungs and perhaps samples of the skin and all its underlying tissues as well. Even though she was exhausted, sleep was out of the question until after that autopsy was finished because the idea of a mystery illness wasn't what frightened her most of all. What frightened her most of all was—

"Tsunade, the med-nins from the Sand have arrived," announced Shizune, jerking Tsunade out of her morbid train of thought. Tsunade jumped, wondering when her attendant had entered the room. In her surprise, she disturbed the sheet that she had been arranging so carefully over the deceased boy. It pulled, bunching around his shoulders and exposing part of his face utterly frozen face.

Tsunade frowned. The frantic hours she had spent laboring to save the Akimichis had driven all thoughts of diplomacy and official business out of her head. _I was supposed to give those Sand nin a demonstration on my healing techniques, _she thought. _I can't appear to them like this. _"Arrange for them to be shown to their inn and assure them that I will meet them as soon as possible."

Tsunade waited for her assistant to excuse herself from the room, but the younger woman said nothing. Without turning around to face the other woman, she said, "Is there something else, Shizune?"

Even without looking at her attendant, Tsunade knew that the other woman was fidgeting uncomfortably as she answered, "Naruto Uzumaki and Sakura Haruno have just arrived here."

"I suppose they want to know more about the Uchiha's condition," Tsunade replied, her eyes never leaving Chouji's still face.

"What should I tell them?"

"You can tell them everything we know. Which isn't much."

"Yes, Tsunade."

Shizune had reached the door of the room when Tsunade whirled around to face her. "They were with Kakashi when he found the Uchiha boy?"

Shizune nodded.

Tsunade's jaw worked as though she was fighting an inner battle. When she spoke again, her voice was hollow. "They must not leave this hospital. The same goes for Kakashi. And while we're at it, I want Shikamaru and Yoshino Nara here as well. I'll be damned if I let this get out of control on my watch. Do you understand?"

"Y-yes, Tsunade." With a small bow, Shizune left the room, her face paper-white.

Once Shizune had gone, Tsunade reached down and straightened the sheet, pulling it up to hide Chouji's lifeless face from view with a trembling hand. The idea of a mysterious new illness was frightening, but what was truly terrifying was the fact that it was spreading.

* * *

**Author's Notes:** More morbidity... We'll be getting to some real action soon--promise! Reviews and constructive criticsm are very greatly appreciated. Also, thanks to my lone reviewer for chapter one: LittleMana!


	3. Quarantined!

CHAPTER THREE

"It's my fault."

"No, it's not."

"Yes it _is, _Sakura."

"No it's _not, _Naruto."

Shikamaru Nara rubbed his temples and wondered what horrible sin he had committed to land him in such an unpleasant predicament. One second he was eating breakfast as peacefully as anybody could while worrying about their slowly dying father. The next, he was whisked away to the hospital by a pair of ANBU black ops, separated from his mother, and locked into a small room with two of the loudest shinobi in all of Konoha.

"Sakura, don't you remember what I said back at the bridge?"

The pink-haired girl swept her bangs out of her face with an irritated swipe of her hand before answering her team mate. "What has that got to do with anything?"

_"Everything!"_

Shikamaru pulled his knees up to his chest, scrunched his eyes closed, and covered his head with his arms, trying to tune out their arguing voices. Sakura and Naruto had been arguing when he'd been unceremoniously delivered to the featureless room, and they showed no sign of stopping any time soon.

"I don't see how anything you said could have caused something like this to happen."

"Yeah, but I…I _wanted _him to be sick. Remember? _'Maybe he got sick.' _Why did I have to say that?"

"Naruto, you're acting like you're four years old. There's no way Sasuke could have—" her breath hitched for an instant, but then she was pushing on with dogged determination: "—could have gotten sick from anything you said."

Shikamaru snapped his eyes open as the meaning of the girl's words sank in. For the first time since he'd arrived in that room, he was interested in what they were arguing about. "So Sasuke's sick, too."

The words had come out as a casual statement—unconcerned; even conversational. There was nothing in them to indicate his growing unease. Even so, Naruto and Sakura broke off their argument and looked at him with varied degrees of distress. Naruto balled his hands into tight fists and clenched his jaw. When he finally spoke, his voice was a strained rasp. "Yeah. He…he looked really bad when we found him. I wish I never said any of that stuff back on the bridge…."

"Stop _saying _that!" Sakura snapped. She took in a convulsive gulp of air that was a hitched, squeaking sob. Shikamaru braced himself for an all-out howling session, but she was surprisingly composed when she turned to him and queried, "What do you mean by 'too'? Who else—"

"My father."

"Damn," Naruto whispered.

Sakura gave him a disapproving look before saying, "I'm sorry."

Shikamaru shrugged and leaned back against the wall with his eyes closed. The awkward silence that followed stretched to a point just below unbearable before he said, "Sakura, I know you haven't been working at the hospital for long, but can you answer a couple of questions?"

Sakura raised her eyebrows. "Maybe. It depends on what you want to know."

"All right. Naruto said Sasuke looked really bad when you found him. Can you be more specific?"

Naruto broke in before Sakura had a chance to answer. "Why?" he demanded, eyes sharp and glaring. His hands clenched into fists again and for a split second Shikamaru thought that he was about to leap across the room and punch him full-on in the face. Then the hands were open again and his expression softened. "He just looked really sick. You know—fever, throwing up…sounded like he had a really bad chest cold or…or something."

"There was some swelling in his face," Sakura added. "It looked like a rash was starting to form on his back and chest, too."

_Just like dad, _Shikamaru thought. _Might as well go for broke before I ask the big one, just in case. _"Any idea what it is?"

She shook her head.

_Guess there's no way around it. _"So have they ever had forced quarantine before or is this new?"

Sakura gaped at him.

"What, that's what this is, isn't it? All three of us were in contact with people who were sick and now we're locked in this room. I'm assuming they've done something similar with Kakashi and my mother. So have they done anything like this before or not?"

"No…At least, I've never heard about it if they did." Her face was paper-white.

Naruto looked from Sakura to Shikamaru and back before saying, "So what's that supposed to mean? Do they think we're going to get sick like Sasuke did?"

"I don't know," Sakura whispered. "Maybe. Probably."

Naruto gave a nervous titter before summing up exactly what Shikamaru was thinking: "Shit."

* * *

Tsunade scrutinized the results of her analysis of the spinal fluid samples that she had drawn from Chouji Akimichi for the hundredth time. _I've missed something—I've got to have missed something, _she thought, scanning the substance levels for any small deviation from the norm, no matter how insignificant. _Protein levels are all normal. Leukocytes, lymphocytes, monocytes, glucose—all within normal ranges._

She shook her head. No matter how many times she reviewed the results, they showed no indication of any abnormalities or infection. _Just like the blood tests, _she thought. _And the skin tests. And the lung tissue exam. I didn't even find any viruses or foreign bacteria in the sputum that was gunking up their lungs. At this rate the only explanation I've got is that their bodies just up and decided to die._

"Well I _know _that can't be right," she sighed. She brought her hand up to rub her dry, aching eyes and was surprised to find that they were prickling with hot tears. _I really must be nearing exhaustion, _she thought. _I'm never like this. _Sinking her weary body down onto a chair, all she wanted at that moment was to go home and forget about mystery illnesses and useless autopsy results. She wanted to break into her secret stash of sake; the two or three bottles she kept hidden in the fireplace in case Shizune got it into her head to pour all of her other alcohol down the drain again. Take two, maybe three shots—just enough to feel comfortably warm. Then she would sleep long and undisturbed.

Pleasant as it sounded, Tsunade knew she couldn't leave the hospital to indulge. If there was one thing she knew about the disease that had killed the Akimichi clan, it was that it acted fast. Even with intense supportive care, Tsunade had no doubt that it was capable of killing both Nara and the Uchiha boy by sunset. _That means I've got less than ten hours to figure out this little mystery. _She smiled humorlessly and wiped away the last of her exhausted tears. _Just what I needed to calm my nerves. A time limit._

Before she could begin to consider what to do next, there was a light tap on the door. Tsunade felt her guts churn. Under such serious circumstances, nobody would dare to disturb her unless there was extremely bad news or extremely good news to report.

From the moment Shizune entered the room, Tsunade knew that it was the former. If the look on Shizune's face wasn't proof enough, the fact that she hovered by the door shuffling her feet more than gave it away. Still, Tsunade said, "Yes, Shizune, what is it?"

"Tsunade…The Sand med-nins are—"

"I _know, _Shizune. Offer them my apologies and arrange for our meeting to be moved to tomorrow morning. Now tell me the real reason you're here."

Her assistant chewed her lip, delaying the news for as long as possible. When she finally spoke her gaze never left the floor. "Hiashi and Hanabi Hyuuga were discovered unconscious at the Hyuuga compound an hour ago. They have been admitted to intensive care."

"Have you contained the rest of the Hyuuga clan?"

"Hinata and Neji have already been added to the children's quarantine. ANBU is still escorting the adults here."

Tsunade gave an approving nod. The ghost of a smile plucked at her lips, but it faded into concern when she noticed that Shizune was shuffling uncomfortably from foot to foot. It was obvious that she had more to say and it was more obvious that she didn't want to say it. Tsunade waited for the other woman to speak for several seconds before demanding, "What else, Shizune?"

"I…I know that you don't want to hear this Tsunade, and I don't want to have to be the one to tell you—"

"Just tell me."

Shizune took in a long, unsteady breath and slowly let it out. "Yoshino Nara and Kakashi Hatake have both fallen ill as well. They were just transferred from quarantine to intensive care ten minutes ago."

A comprehensive list of every curse word Tsunade had ever heard in her life ran through her head. She felt like screaming, felt like snapping the stainless steel lab table in half. Instead, she said, "Is there anything else?" Shizune shook her head. "Good. Keep monitoring the sick and keep me informed of any other changes."

Shizune gave a jerky bow and slipped out the door. Tsunade waited until she could no longer hear the flap of her hospital slippers before snarling some of the most choice curse words that had been swirling in her head. _Everything keeps getting worse and I'm still no closer to figuring out what this disease is, let alone finding a way to stop it. I haven't been under this much stress since the Third Ninja War, when Chiyo's poisons were wreaking havoc on—_"Oh," she breathed. _"Chiyo."_

* * *

Ino Yamanaka offered a sullen wave to the flower shop's tenth customer of the day and flicked the handful of coins into the cash register drawer. She was so angry she couldn't concentrate on anything else. She was angry with Asuma for canceling their team training so abruptly without giving any explanation whatsoever. _(He's always lecturing us for slacking off…hmph! Look who's talking!) _She was even more furious with herself for dragging herself out of bed at the ungodly hour of 5:30 am to primp and preen for the canceled training session. _(That's two hours of beauty sleep I'll never get back. What a waste.) _She was angrier still with her father for forcing her to work in the flower shop on what should have qualified as a legitimate day off. _(Why let your daughter have a day off when you can give it to one of your employees and have her work in their place on the cheap?) _But most of all, she was furious because being furious was much easier than being afraid.

Something was wrong. That much was apparent from the dazed expression she'd seen on Asuma's face; the same expression that she'd seen on her father's face all day whenever he thought that she wasn't looking. _It's Shikamaru, _she thought. The idea slammed through her head with the force of a roundhouse kick. _If it's not him then it's Chouji._

She shook her head and directed her thoughts back to safer grounds. There were bags under her eyes. Big, ugly bags. They were visible, even through the layer of makeup she'd so carefully applied to hide them. Every person who had come to the shop had noticed; she was sure of it. _I might as well hide under a paper bag, _she thought. _Why didn't I just go back to bed as soon as I heard about training?_

The answer was so obvious she couldn't ignore it no matter how hard she tried to hold on to her anger: _You were worried about them. Even when we get a day apart from each other they still manage to cramp my style. Imagine that._ She tried to laugh, but her chest was tight and it came out as a harsh giggle.

She balled her hands into fists. "This is _ridiculous!" _she snapped. The words rang in the air, bleeding into the silence following her outburst and she felt her nerves quieting. The sound of her own voice was therapeutic; something to fill the uncomfortable silence that left too much room for negative thinking. She decided then that she was going to keep talking out loud, never mind what any customers might think.

"That's right; it's completely ridiculous to be worrying like this. There might not even be anything to worry _about. _Besides that, worrying gives you wrinkles. So just stop it." She took in a deep breath and let it out with a defiant huff. "That's right. No way _I'm _going to be all shriveled up like a prune by the time I'm—"

_CRASH!_

Ino cut herself off with a yelp as the sound thundered through the shop. A nervous jumble of thoughts blinked through her head—_Chouji-Shikamaru-Asuma-hurt-attack-troubletroubletrouble—_and then she whispered, "You're a ninja, girl. Get a grip."

_It sounded like it came from the cold room. Which means that it was probably one of the vases with our most expensive ikebana in it. _"Oh, that's just great," she sighed. "Daddy's going to kill me. Guess I'd better go clean up the mess."

The words would have sounded convincingly nonchalant to anybody else who might have heard them, but Ino couldn't fool herself. Even as she locked the drawer in the cash register, she felt a nervous, tickling sensation in her chest. It wasn't that she was afraid of the cold room, per se. She knew very well that it was nothing more than a walk-in refrigerator that her father had converted into a storage room for backordered flowers. There was nothing intimidating in that. It was just….

Her mind wandered back to the day she'd gotten trapped inside the cold room when she was five years old. She could still remember the terror welling in her chest when she realized that she couldn't get out. The big refrigerator had seemed so dark and cold and _quiet. _Even with the constant thrumming of the cooling unit that awful silence made her feel like she had stumbled into her own personal crypt. By the time her father heard her screaming she'd been trapped for over half an hour. To this day she couldn't help feeling an edge of apprehension any time she had to go near that big, steel door.

Standing in front of the door, she considered going back to the front room to get her weapons holster. There was nothing like a good kunai in hand to make her feel more secure. The idea seemed so appealing that she was halfway down the hall before she stopped and shook her head in disbelief. _What am I thinking? It's a refrigerator. You do _not _need a kunai to handle a refrigerator._

That decided, she turned around, marched to the end of the hall and jerked the door open hard enough for it to clatter back against the wall. A breath of icy air wafted out, raising gooseflesh on her bare arms as she carefully propped the door to prevent it from swinging shut while she was inside. Once she was sure that there was no chance of being trapped, she swallowed back the last of her unease, walked inside—and groaned at the sight of the mess on the floor.

An entire shelf full of ikebana had fallen. Flowers and shards of glass were strewn everywhere. A few flowers appeared to be salvageable, but Ino could tell just by looking that most of them would have to be thrown away. She stooped down and picked up the remains of a crushed rose. _It's going to take hours to clean this up, _she thought. _I don't even want to think about how much all of this was worth. Daddy's going to have a conniption when he hears about this._

With a resigned sigh, she started off to retrieve a broom—and came to a dead halt in the doorway. Amid the sea of ruined flowers, she'd caught a glimpse of something strange; something that didn't belong. It was back in the far corner, almost completely hidden by a heap of ruined lilies. If she hadn't been so much on edge she would have missed it entirely. The shadows made it difficult to see clearly, and although her instincts were screaming at her to _leave_ her legs were taking her forward.

It wasn't until she was nearly standing on top of the oddity that she recognized it for what it was, and once she did she was unable to look away, frozen with horror. She was looking at a bloodied human hand.

"Oh…," she whispered, taking a shaky step back. It wasn't so much the appendage's mangled appearance that disturbed her. As a shinobi, blood and gore were all in a regular day's work. Rather it was the unexpectedness of it all; the way it seemed to lie there so matter-of-factly as though it _belonged _there.

The hand's fingers—the three that remained—twitched as though sensing it's newly arrived audience. There was a gurgling sound from the darkest part of the corner beneath the bottom shelf of ikebana. Ino didn't want to look at the person who had made that sound. Still, her eyes traveled down the length of the arm to the face and her heart froze in her chest because lying broken and bleeding on the cold cement floor was none other than Inoichi Yamanka.

_"Daddy!" _she whispered, choking on the word.

She stared, transfixed as with what seemed a tremendous effort, he raised his head up off the ground. He opened his mouth to speak and a bubble of blood burst between his lips, leaving a thick dribble down his chin. "Ino," he groaned. His lips worked, but no sound came out. Ino leaned closer, straining to hear what he was trying to say. When he spoke at last, the word came out as a gurgled whisper: _"Run."_

Ino took a stumbling step backwards, crunching a shard of glass to powder under her foot, and then her instincts clamped down and she was running for the door; the door that was swinging closed, even though she had been so very careful to prop it open because she couldn't stand the idea of being trapped inside that cold, dark crypt again. She threw all of her weight against the heavy steel door as she barreled into it with her shoulder, but there was an unnatural resistance from outside. Fortunately, it lurched an inch, two—wide enough for her to shove her foot between the door and its frame.

With strength that comes only with desperation, she forced her leg through the opening, then her head, her shoulder, and with a twist, she was out of the cold room and in the hallway. There was a flash of black in the corner of her eye—a huge, gloved fist powering towards her left temple. She spun right and the fist whistled past her ear, close enough for her to hear the _whuff _of air behind it. Then she was running down the hall, able only to think of the weapons holster she had left sitting on the shelf under the clerk's counter in the front of the shop. She knew that she _needed _it because if the size of the fist that she had so narrowly dodged was any indication, the man who was pursuing her was a _monster. _She may have graduated from the Academy with the distinction of top female taijutsu user, but her eighty-four pound frame wouldn't be enough to cause any substantial damage to an opponent of that size.

She had almost made it to the end of the hall when a door to her right flew open, bashing against the side of her head hard enough for her to see stars. It was only a split second that she was stunned, but that was all the second man needed to jab a senbon into the sensitive area between the base of her neck and her shoulder. There was a momentary burning sensation, and then a cool numbness began to spread down her arm and across her chest.

_Sedative, _she thought, managing to stagger two steps forward before her legs gave way. _I can't die! I can't!_ _Not now; not like this! I—I never got to get married or kiss a boy or even go out on a date! I can't…. _She tried to will her body to move, but everything was already growing dark and bleary. There was a big, black shadow hovering over her, and even in her increasing drowsiness, she was able to recognize the dull gleam of steel. She closed her eyes, and wondered where the deathblow would fall. Would he slit her throat? Stab her in the heart? Or maybe he'd rather puncture a lung and watch her suffocate like her father.

"No, no…don't kill this one yet," said a low, raspy voice. "Something this pretty shouldn't be thrown out like the rest of the garbage. This one deserves a death to fit her beauty. Wouldn't you agree?"

Ino didn't hear what the man with the knife thought of his companion's idea. She was already lost to the black oblivion of a drugged and dreamless sleep.

* * *

**Author's Notes:** Hi, all. So...action. Yes. Let me know if you like (or hate) it, 'cause it's only going to pick up from here on out. And remember: reviews give you good karma.

To LittleMana: I usually have a plan of what I want to happen in each chapter of a story and then post as I finish writing each chapter. This time I'm a little further ahead--I've written some of the chapters already, but not all of them.

Special thanks to nakuzzle and LittleMana for your encouraging reviews (and also to everybody who has already added this to alerts / favorites)! You guys keep me going!


	4. The Infection Spreads

CHAPTER FOUR

Kiba Inuzuka juggled the bulky grocery bags in his arms, prompting an indignant yip from a bulge in his jacket. The bulge squirmed, climbing from a point near his midriff up to his chest, and then the white nin-dog Akamaru poked his head up out of the collar of the coat to bark up at the boy's chin.

"Sorry, buddy; didn't mean to crush you," grunted Kiba. "These econo-size bags of dog kibble aren't exactly the easiest things to manage, though." He struggled with the unwieldy bags for a few more seconds before bags number one and two tumbled to the ground and bag number three fell on top of his foot.

With a yip that was remarkably similar to the one that had just come from his canine companion, he hopped up and down, shaking the injured appendage wildly. When the pain subsided, he stooped to gather up the scattered bags and groaned, "Owww!" Akamaru took the opportunity to slither out of Kiba's jacket and settle on top of the boy's head to avoid being crushed again.

_Man has this been a sucky day so far, _Kiba thought once he started on his way again. _I wake up late, run over to our training grounds, wait there for a freaking _hour _before anybody bothers to tell me that training is canceled today, get stuck doing the grocery shopping, and now I go and practically break my toe under a giant bag of dog food. I wonder what'll happen next._ Aloud, he said, "Hey, Akamaru, after we drop this stuff off at home, do you want to swing by Shino's place and bug him for a while?"

His companion barked back an affirmative response and Kiba grinned. "Cool. Hey, remember the time we took his sunglasses and hid them for a whole week back when we were still in the Academy? All the girls were flipping out because they thought we had some new mystery guy. Man, that was funny!"

Akamaru whimpered, but Kiba kept laughing. "Who cares if he sicked a bunch of fleas on us? It was totally worth it!"

His spirits raised, he started around the bend that would bring his house into view—and stopped with a jerk as an sickening odor wafted to his nose. It was a smell that he had always hated, even though it was unavoidable in his line of work. A whiff of copper. A dash of something fleshy like raw meat. An edge of mild organic rot. The stench of spilled blood.

It would have been an insult to Akamaru's abilities to ask the nin-dog whether he smelled it as well. Instead, Kiba let the grocery bags fall to the ground with a collective thud, snaked his hand into his ever-present weapons holster and withdrew two black soldier pills. He tossed one up to the pup on top of his head before popping the other into his own mouth. The resulting surge of chakra was so heady it was almost dizzying, but he wasted no time to allow it to level out. Together, they ran forward and Kiba performed a series of rapid hand seals.

"All Fours jutsu!"he shouted, and even as his fingernails were hardening into curved claws, he ran through another string of seals. "Man Beast Clone!" By the time they were within sight of their home, boy and dog had finished their transformations to become identical beast clones, powering forward on all fours and a sharp wave of new smells assaulted their sensitive noses. Sweat. Adrenaline. Fear? Kiba had to smell again, unable to believe that last one; not wanting to consider what it might mean. His nose hadn't lied. The reek of fear was faint, but undeniably present.

Everything was perfectly still, and that cocktail of unsettling smells seemed all the more ominous for it. The Inuzuka house was never quiet—people were always bustling in and out, dogs were always barking or wrestling in the front yard, smoke was always curling out of the rickety old chimney…. Even when the two of them burst through the front door, the house was unnaturally quiet. No greeting barks, not even any scolding for taking three hours to pick up the groceries. There was only silence and the overpowering stink of blood.

He found his mother first. Even though some part of him had known what he was going to see there was a moment of numb shock when he saw her lifeless body lying on the floor. There were deep slashes in both arms, a handful of shuriken embedded in her throat, a gaping hole in the place where her stomach belonged…she hadn't just been killed; she'd been _brutalized._ Her two nin-dogs had received the same treatment—they were curled in two heaps of blood and fur at their mistress' feet.

Something stirred in the corner of the room; a stranger with splatters of blood on his clothes and hands. Kiba didn't hesitate, didn't think or analyze or try to invent any clever strategy. Instead, he lunged into his attack with Akamaru mirroring his movements as he began to rotate in midair. He was so furious he didn't bother to call out the jutsu until the two of them were almost on top of the man: "Fang Over Fang!"

He felt the solid impact as the hit connected with the man's abdomen and sensed Akamaru pulling back to stop his momentum but Kiba kept driving forward. Kiba was well aware of the fact that the man was dead, but he let the attack carry the two of them through the air until they ran up against the wall and he heard a the man's ribs snap.

Vaguely, he heard Akamaru questioning whether such force had been necessary, whether the man had even seen them coming. Even through his rapidly waning sense of rationality, Kiba knew that his friend was right. The man hadn't noticed them, and even if he had Kiba suspected that he had been unarmed. A gentle, glancing blow would have sufficed, but he had poured so much chakra into the attack that he could feel his reserves straining to maintain his transformation jutsu even with the aid of the soldier pill he'd swallowed. But—

Another whiff of blood hit his nose like a physical force. _These bastards don't deserve a fair fight, _he thought as he barreled out of the room after the trail. In spite of his resolve, Kiba was relieved when Akamaru stopped his questioning and followed him without another word. He was in no mood to deal with the nin-dog's questions and comments.

They ran down the hall, past two dead nin-dogs—_Hana's, _Kiba thought and proceeded to mutter every swear word he could think of under his breath—past his (ransacked) bedroom, and into the kitchen, where a man dressed in black was standing with his back to the door. As soon as Kiba entered the room the man's posture stiffened and he turned around to face him. He stood staring at the wild-looking boy and his cloned nin-dog for several seconds before his face split into a smile.

"So here's the pup," he drawled, turning his attention to something that was lying on the ground. Kiba bristled at the sound of the man's voice. Something about that cool, confident tone was much more infuriating than any form of mock or sneer. He followed the man's eyes to the floor where his sister's body lay. She was in no better condition than his mother and all their nin-dogs had been and Kiba could barely hold back a snarl as the man nudged the girl's cheek with the toe of his boot. The man continued on in that maddeningly even tone: "Is this your sister?"

Kiba offered no reply save for a low growl deep in the back of his throat. The smile on the man's face took on a sordid quality as he said, "She was a good screw. Before I slit her throat, that is."

A chill curled through Kiba's body at the man's words. It started in the space between his chest and his belly and he felt it stretching through his legs, into his fingers, up to his mouth. It reached his eyes and he was blind, and then his head and he was reeling so badly he could barely hear the man saying, "Of course, you wouldn't know about _that. _Or maybe you would. A family that lives like dogs…I wouldn't put it past any one of you to—"

Kiba leapt forward and sank his teeth into something warm and soft. The coppery taste of blood flooded into his mouth and he tore a mouthful of flesh away with a twist of his neck. He didn't know whether it was from the man's arm or his leg or face, and it didn't matter because the chill had penetrated into the deepest recesses of his mind, freezing the last of his waning rationality in place. Jutsu and chakra were forgotten; all that mattered was killing the man and making him _hurt _as much as possible as he died.

The man gave a strangled, choking gasp and half-raised a shaking hand to the hole that Kiba had torn in his throat. Kiba stomped on the hand, pinning it to the floor, and then he plopped down to the ground, driving the knee of his free leg into the man's chest. Then he was driving his fist into the man's mouth, his nose, his eyes over and over and over….

And Akamaru was there, trying to pull Kiba off the unmoving body and repeating, "Kiba, it's over; he's dead!" His knuckles were bleeding and his transformation jutsu had faded, but Kiba couldn't stop, even if he'd wanted to because the cold chill was still in his brain and in his hands and guts and heart. His rage was so absolute he could see nothing besides that man's twisted smirk—which was why he never saw the shuriken until they were buried in his shoulder.

He howled with pain and jumped away from the man's body. Akamaru was whimpering, and Kiba had just enough time to register that the nin-dog's whines were coming from somewhere behind him before an arm snaked around his body to slash at his abdomen with a kunai. His legs wobbled and gave out and he felt something warm and sticky dribbling through his jacket and down his legs. A set of arms caught him under the armpits, forcing him to stand like a puppet on a string, and then a voice said, "Sedation successful. What are your orders?"

A low, raspy voice replied, "He's of no use to us. Finish him off."

Kiba tried to force his body to move—_where the hell was Akamaru?—_but his limbs were numb. He felt something drive into his back and _tear_ and he opened his mouth to scream_—how could he have missed sensing these two; sniffing them out?—_but nothing would come out. There was a buzzing in his ears that swelled until it was all he could hear and then the world was blotting out of existence.

As his body hit the ground, his muddled ears caught the first man's statement, "Inuzuka extermination complete." And all was dark.

* * *

Shizune clutched the crinkling bag of potato chips in her hand and wavered between laughing and sobbing. On the one hand, she knew that she cut a ridiculous figure racing through the Konoha hospital ICU carrying the red bag of junk food. _Doctor, get these patients a helping of salt and lard, stat! _On the other hand, the food had been intended as a gift for a boy whose grim death only hours earlier had marked the beginning of a crisis that was shaking Konoha to its core. She finally settled on a choked noise that came out as a barking cough.

The sound caught the attention of a flock of orderlies who were pushing a wheeled stretcher down the hall ahead of her. They came to an abrupt halt, blocking the way, and turned around to see who had dared to make such a noise in the ward intended for the critically ill and injured. Shizune felt a wave of discomfort wash over her at the sight of them. With their bodies swaddled in the white hospital scrubs and their faces hidden behind cloth masks, they looked like phantoms with empty eyes. Through the press of bodies, Shizune was able to catch a glimpse of the person that lay on the stretcher. Long dark hair, streaked with gray near the temples—enough for her to guess that it was one of the elder Hyuugas.

_So now it's gotten to the clan leaders, _she thought and felt a hysterical urge to laugh again. Instead, she summoned up as much authority as she could muster to ask, "Have any of you seen Tsunade?"

The ghostly figures looked at one another as though confirming their collective answer before responding with a subdued chorus of "no."

Shizune didn't bother with a thank you as she pushed past the knot of people in the narrow hall and continued on, pausing to check every room she came to for any sign of the Hokage. Every room was the same: an occupied hospital bed, the whir of a respirator and the hum of monitors, but no Tsunade. _This is…it's out of control, _she thought. _There's no end in sight—it just keeps spreading! And the poor Nara boy…I wonder if he'll ever be the same after all of this is over. _She felt a hot tear crawl down her cheek. _I wonder if any of us will ever be the same._

By the time she reached the last room in the ward, Shizune had given up hope of seeing anybody else up and about on the deadly silent ward besides the white-cloaked orderlies. She was barely able to swallow back a yelp of surprise when the door swung open, but when she noticed who had stepped out of the room the her yelp came out unhindered.

"K-Kakashi?" she stammered through her shock. "But—but you were sick…I was there…I—I hooked you up to the ventilator myself!"

The white-haired jounin raised an eyebrow and croaked, "So you're the one I have to thank for this hellishly sore throat then."

"But…but…."

He made a rasping noise that might have been an attempt at a laugh. "Kidding. Just kidding."

"How…?"

"I don't know. Ask Tsunade." He winced and brought a hand up to his throat. Shizune realized then that the 'hellishly sore throat' comment couldn't have been much of an exaggeration._ He's so hoarse I'm surprised he can speak at all, _she thought.

"Is Tsunade in there?" she queried. Kakashi opened his mouth to reply and to spare him the trouble, she added, "Just nod if she is." He nodded in response and Shizune said a quick thank you before bursting through the door and into the room.

The Hokage was standing in the middle of the room, her face a mix of many emotions. Shizune knew the other woman well enough to guess that the gleam she saw in those eyes was one of triumph, but she could think of no reason that could explain why her lips were puckered in a tight frown. More worrisome, although Tsunade was looking in the direction of the door, she made no move to acknowledge Shizune's presence.

"Tsunade?"

Tsunade came back to herself with a jump. "Shizune…."

"Tsunade, you did it!" Shizune grinned. "I was so worried…I was afraid that things were getting out of control, but now everything's going to be OK, right?"

"R-right. Everything is going to be fine now." The ghost of a genuine smile appeared on her face. "Do you have news about the status of our other patients?"

Shizune felt her flying spirits crash back down to the soles of her feet. The excitement of Tsunade's breakthrough didn't change the gravity of the information that Shizune had brought with her. "Almost all of the elder Hyuugas have been transferred to intensive care, and—" her voice hitched and she had to force the next words past a tight lump in her throat: "—and Hanabi Hyuuga and Shikaku and Yoshino Nara are all dead."

Tsunade was quiet for a long time with her lips pursed and her jaw clenched. When she finally spoke, it came out in an exhausted sigh. "Has anybody informed Neji, Hinata, and Shikamaru of this?"

"Yes; I did. I just came here from the children's quarantine."

"How are they holding up?"

Shizune blinked back a wave of prickling tears, determined to maintain some form of composure. "Hinata should be all right as long as Neji stays healthy. The Nara boy…." She trailed off, waiting until she was sure she could trust her voice.

The silence stretched until Tsunade prompted, "What is it? Do you think he might try to harm himself?"

"N-no! Nothing like that at all! He was upset—understandably so—but not destructive. He was…very quiet. And he gave me this." With a crinkle of cellophane, she held out the red bag of potato chips. Gingerly, as though it was an activated exploding note, the Hokage took the bag from her assistant. She stared at it with her brow furrowed, saying nothing.

Shizune shifted her weight from one foot to the other, and, unable to stand the silence any longer, babbled, "Shikamaru…he asked me to take that to the Akimichi boy's room for when he got better. I didn't have the heart to tell him that Chouji was already dead and I didn't know what else to do with it so I just—"

"So _that's _how…."

"What?" Shizune knew that her chatter wasn't always the most exciting thing in the world, but she couldn't fathom how Tsunade could find a bag of junk food more interesting than her own friend and assistant. The other woman hadn't taken her eyes off the red bag from the moment Shizune had called her attention to it. Now she was staring at it like it was a source of enlightenment. "Tsunade, what is it?"

Tsunade shook her head and was suddenly all business. "Shizune, take this—" she pulled a vial filled with a murky white substance and pressed it into Shizune's hands "—and administer three milligrams to all of our patients immediately. Don't allow any nurses or aides to help; I want you to do it personally. Then I want you to check our store of glucagons and meet me in my office at the Hokage tower in thirty minutes."

Shizune glanced down at the vial in her hand. A jumble of questions raced through her head, begging to be asked. She forced them to the back of her mind, executed a sharp bow, and hurried from the room. She had known the older woman long enough to recognize when there was no time for questions; when it was absolutely imperative that orders be followed to the letter. Now, if ever, was one of those times.

* * *

**Author's Notes:** I'd like to thank nakuzzle, LittleMana, and Af for your kind reviews. Nice comments make me grin like an idiot all day long and constructive criticism makes me feel important. More to come soon!


	5. Betrayal

CHAPTER FIVE

The first thing that Shizune saw when she arrived at the Hokage's office was the massive stack of paperwork that was piled at the left side of the desk. A mess of meaningless political jargon and red tape, most of it was waiting to receive the official Hokage seal before it was whisked away to its final resting place in the hall of records. There they would lay, their color fading from white to yellow to brown to dust and nothing.

It occurred to her then—ridiculously; stupidly—that that stack of papers was the only thing that had remained unchanged from when the office had belonged to the Third. _We even had to replace the desk because Tsunade broke it, _she thought. _Twice._

A faint smile played at the corner of her lips, but it faded the moment she noticed the small, white bottle that was sitting atop the stack of papers. She directed her attention to Tsunade herself, and the telltale flush that colored her master's cheeks only confirmed her suspicious. Her face contorted into an indignant frown. "Tsunade, what on earth are you thinking, drinking sake at a time like this? If word of this gets out—"

"What do you know about Compound 23?"

Despite a slightly excessive volume, Tsunade's voice was clear and her tone demonstrated that she was in no mood to endure Shizune's scolding. Shizune quickly bit back the customary stream of chastising words, but did her best to convey her disapproval with a gusty sigh before replying, "Not much. It was created by the Sand and used during the Third Shinobi War. Any other information about it is restricted."

"Exactly as it should be," Tsunade said with a scowl that was harsh enough to make Shizune wonder whether the older woman's beautifying genjutsu had slipped. Shizune was unsure whether she was meant to say anything more and was on the verge of opening her mouth to speak again when the angry lines on Tsunade's face softened and her eyes acquired a faraway look. "It was Chiyo's masterpiece. Absolutely brilliant and I'm not even embarrassed to admit it. A poison that doesn't _act _like a poison. Who would have expected something like that? Chameleon…that's what we called it once we finally figured it out."

"I'm sorry, but I don't understand, Tsunade …why are you asking me about this? Do you think that Compound 23 is behind everything?"

Tsunade's eyes lost their dreamy glaze as she snapped back to reality. "Compound 23 is a poison that imitates a severe strain of chest disease and leaves no trace of itself in the blood or tissues. Victims usually experience nausea, progressive skin rash and chakra depletion, high fever, and of course, a nasty cough."

"So…it was Compound 23, then?" Shizune took a stumbling step back, away from the desk where her master was seated. Whether she was offended by the interruption or whether it was something entirely different, the flicker of fury that flashed through Tsunade's eyes was enough to make Shizune fear for the health and well-being of said desk. _We would have to find another desk, _she thought. _And all of the papers would scatter everywhere…._

"The only drawback to Compound 23 is that it's a slow-acting poison. Its victims rarely die until after all of their chakra reserves have been exhausted, which can take up to two weeks," Tsunade continued.

Shizune frowned. "So it _wasn't _Compound 23?"

Tsunade gave her a withering look. "Oh, it was Compound 23, all right."

"But you said—"

"What did you see when you checked our store of glucagons?"

Shizune's frown deepened. "About half of it was…." She trailed off, a spark of understanding flitting through her brain. "Half of it was missing. A catalyst?"

"Exactly. Somebody was administering massive amounts of glucagons to all of the patients in order to speed the poison along."

Shizune felt a short-lived glow of pride before a new realization dawned on her. "No…Tsunade, that can't be it. You tested all of the Akimichis and everything was normal. Wouldn't you have noticed the extra glucose in the autopsy?"

"Maybe. But think about the Akimichi clan, Shizune. Think about this—here." She opened a drawer in her desk and removed the red bag of potato chips that she had pored over in Kakashi's hospital room.

Shizune took the bag and turned in over in her hands, staring at it as though she had never seen such a thing in all her life. She shook her head. "I don't get it."

_"Think,_ Shizune," Tsunade snapped, pounding her hand down on the desk with a threatening crack of wood on the verge of splintering. She righted the (thankfully empty) sake bottle, which had fallen off of the stack of papers before repeating, "Think, Shizune. An Akimichi never went anywhere without taking along a bag full of snacks. Why was that?"

Shizune didn't want to think. The day had been so long and tiring that her nerves had been stretched past their breaking point hours ago. She was tempted to reply, "Because they like to eat." If not for the expense of replacing yet another expensive wood desk, she would have done so. Instead, she mumbled, "Their strength is tied to food." She glanced at Tsunade to see if this was the answer she'd been looking for. A choppy nod from her master prompted her to go on. "Without a constant supply of food, they'll grow weaker…they could even lose consciousness or slip into a coma. They burn through…through glucose faster than normal. It's a genetic defect that causes chronic hypoglycemia."

"Right," Tsunade affirmed with a triumphant smile. "Akimichis will always register low glucose readings—especially if their bodies have been fighting a deadly poison for twelve hours without anything to eat. But all three of them were at the higher end of normal when I performed the autopsy. Which means that for an Akimichi, they _weren't _normal. And that means that those Sand bastards really must have done their homework before they did any of this."

"W-what?"

Tsunade gave her a sympathetic look. "At first, I was just as shocked as you are."

"But—but Tsunade—"

"Don't worry. I've just issued an order to ANBU to detain the Sand med-nins for interrogation. We'll have this cleared up by sunrise. In the meantime, we've got to remain calm. Here. Have a drink."

Shizune stared at the proffered empty bottle in disbelief. "Tsunade, are you sure it was the Sand?"

"Of course it was the Sand!" Tsunade snapped, her face flushing maroon. She glanced down at the bottle in her hand, and withdrew it when she noticed that she was holding it upside-down.

"But doesn't it seem a little too neat and perfect? The Sand-nin arrive and all of a sudden people start getting sick from a poison that hasn't been used in decades but just happens to have been created by their most talented poisons expert? It…it smells like a setup to me."

"Well, either way, we'll know by morning. Besides, our treaty with the Sand allows for interrogation under dire circumstances, and this definitely qualifies. Even if I'm wrong, the Sand has no grounds for retaliation. Besides, I doubt that they _could _launch another attack against us at this point. They're still recovering from the aftermath of the chuunin exam fiasco—they haven't even named a new Kazekage yet."

"But that's exactly my point!" Shizune exclaimed. She chewed her lip and began to pace in choppy revolutions in front of her master's desk. "The Sand village has always been headstrong, but they're not stupid…they wouldn't pull a stunt like this. At least, not now, when they're still weak. And besides that…" She came to a jerky stop beside the stack of papers on the far end of the desk and wrung her hands. "Besides that…if they had any Compound 23 left, wouldn't they have used it against us during their alliance with the Sound? Have any other countries used it?"

The drunken flush that had colored Tsunade's face faded away as all the color drained from her face. "Yes," she whispered.

Shizune waited for her master to go on, but Tsunade said nothing more until Shizune pushed, "Who?"

"Us."

"W-what?"

Tsunade shook her head. _"We _used Compound 23 against them once we figured out what it was. Shizune it's…us."

"Have any other countries used it? Tsunade?"

"No. We should be the only country that has a store of that poison. We forced the Sand to destroy their stockpile, and they're too proud to share Chiyo's crowning achievement with any other shinobi villages…Shizune…." Swaying, she got to her feet.

"Tr—" Shizune shook her head, unable to bring herself to say the ugly word. It bleated through her head, all the same. _Treason. _She noticed suddenly that Tsunade had made her way over to the door of the office and was pulling it open. "Where are you going?"

"To the hospital."

"I'll go with you."  
_"No!" _Shizune came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the room, frightened by the wrathful expression that was burning in her master's eyes. "No. You stay here and check the hospital records for anything suspicious. I'm going to make sure our patients are still getting the correct antidote. And if I catch our little saboteur, they'll wish they'd never even _heard _of Konoha."

* * *

Shikamaru wasn't asleep. Even with her minimal med-nin training, Sakura could read breathing patterns well enough to recognize the difference between genuine and feigned sleep. She knew that Shikamaru had not been asleep for the past several hours, and he certainly wasn't asleep now. Every so often, when he thought nobody was watching, his face would contort into a mask of grief and a tear would squeeze out from behind his closed eyes. Then he would sigh, almost inaudibly, and with the sinews in his neck straining against the effort, he would force his expression to return to one of impassive feigned sleep.

Sakura wondered if she was the only one who noticed. She was fairly sure that she was. Hinata had been weeping on and off ever since Shizune had left and Neji was straining himself raw trying offer up the occasional stilted condolence speech while hiding his own worries and grief. And then there was Naruto, who was showering the two Hyuugas with so much sympathy that every time he opened his mouth Hinata would start to cry again and Neji would give him a furious glare. None of them had even given the Nara boy a second glance after he'd lain down and closed his eyes, which she supposed was what he wanted.

_That's bad, _she thought. _He needs to be around people he can talk to; people who can help him. Asuma or Ino or Chouji…. _The last name sent an uncomfortable shudder down her spine. They had all seen the look on Shizune's face when Shikamaru had handed her that bag of potato chips—the panic that flitted across her eyes. It was more than enough for them to guess the truth, despite her assurances that she would deliver the gift.

She tried to turn her thoughts away from that dangerous path, but it was too late to stop the circle of questions that kept rolling through her head. _If Chouji and Hanabi and both of Shikamaru's parents have died, who else is sick now? Who else has died? _And here it was, unstoppable; the thought that always threatened to tear her calm façade to pieces: _Is Sasuke still alive?_

And there were the tears welling in her eyes and the familiar choking sensation in the back of her throat. She gave her head a furious shake. _I can't cry—not here, not now. Besides, we would know if Sasuke was—was—somebody would tell us if he'd…. _A muscle in her jaw tightened as her mind instinctively omitted that terrifying final word.

The tears were there again, stinging her eyes, burning in her sinuses, wanting to come out. She was hovering so close to her limit of control that she didn't notice Naruto coming towards her. The sound of his voice made her jump, and a tear spilled down her cheek. She wiped it away with a swipe of her hand and interrupted him with a harsh snarl, "What do you want, Naruto? What is it?"

Her reply must have come out more wrathfully than she had intended—his response was a nervous torrent of words that he babbled without taking a breath: "I just wanted to know how long we've been in here because it seems like it's been a really long time and they haven't given us anything to eat for lunch or anything to eat for dinner yet and Sakura, are you crying?"

"No!" she snapped. She gulped back the lump in her throat and was relieved to discover that the tears had dried away. "No," she repeated. "I'm fine. I'm just…worried. That's all."

"Yeah, I'm worried, too. I mean, the way things are going, we're probably not going to get anything to eat at all tonight."

Sakura gaped at him. _How can he possibly be thinking about food at a time like this? How can he be so insensitive? Sometimes I just can't believe him! _She wanted to give him a piece of her mind, but before she had recovered from her shock he had gone on: "So I was thinking that maybe we should…you know…get out of here. So we can go get something to eat. And not be hungry anymore. And maybe, if it's not too far out of the way we could visit Sasuke."

_So that's it, _she thought, feeling her anger evaporate. _Naruto, you're about as subtle as Kakashi's Thousand Years of Pain jutsu. _She nodded. "Let's get out of here."

"You can't leave."

Sakura jumped and glanced across the room to Neji. The Hyuuga boy was absorbed in a conversation with Hinata, who had started in with a fresh round of tears. She turned her attention to Shikamaru. He hadn't opened his eyes or moved from his position on the floor, but that listless voice couldn't have come from anybody else.

"Why not?"

He sighed, and again, without bothering to open his eyes, replied, "Because we're quarantined, remember? The door is locked, so what's the point?"

"So we'll break it down, then!" Naruto snapped, forming his hands into the familiar hand seal for Shadow Clones.

Sakura watched the clone as it obediently formed a ball of spinning chakra in her teammate's hand. "Don't you want to get out of this place? Don't you care about what's happening out there—if anybody else is sick, or…or…." She trailed off, even less able to bring herself to say the horrible word than she was able to think it.

With a sudden, graceless movement, Shikamaru sat up to glare at her with furious, watery eyes. "Or what?" he demanded. "Dead? Go ahead and say it if that's what you mean. It's not like saying it makes it any more or less true."

"But don't you care?"

He barked out a harsh laugh. "Care about what? Sasuke? The Hyuugas?" A tremor passed over his face, but his voice was steady as he added, "Nothing matters to me."

A flash of anger stabbed through her as she listened to his words. It burned through her brain hot enough to overshadow any sympathy she had felt for the grieving boy. _How can he be so cold, _she wondered. _He of all people should appreciate what we—all of us—are going through! _She was seized with an irrational desire to _make _him care. "What about Chouji?" she hissed. "Don't you want to see if Shizune gave him those potato chips?"

The look of pain that twisted across his face was enough for her to know that she'd struck a nerve. In the back of her mind she knew that she had done enough damage; that she should _stop, _but the words continued to leave her mouth in an unstoppable torrent. "And what about Asuma? Or Ino? If it's as contagious as it sounds, I bet they've caught it by now, too. Don't you want to go and see them?"

The room seemed to be filled with a roaring silence while he stared at her in disbelief. She felt giddy and her arm was unnaturally light as she lifted her hand to her mouth as though to hold back anything else that might come out of it. He half-opened his mouth and then pressed his lips together into a tight line. Sakura knew that she should apologize, but he was already turning away to lie back down on the floor and the words wouldn't come.

She was still fishing for something to say to put things right when Naruto said, "Come on, Sakura. Let's go."

Trying to pour every scrap of remorse that she could muster into her eyes, she gave Shikamaru one final, desperate look. His eyes were closed. She got to her feet and shakily made her way to doorway, vacant courtesy of a well-placed Rasengan.

Naruto was talking with Neji when she reached the door. "Are you sure you guys don't want to come with us?" he said.

"I think it would be better if we stayed here," he replied with a meaningful look at Hinata, who was sitting on the ground with her knees hugged to her chest. She didn't even appear to register the fact that the door had been blown to splinters.

Naruto followed his gaze with a troubled expression. "Yeah; I guess you're right," he sighed. "You ready, Sakura?"

Sakura nodded, though she barely heard the words. _Why did I say those things, _she thought as she stepped out into the hall. _I wanted to make things better and only ended up making them worse. Why can't I just let things go?_

They started off, Naruto in front and Sakura absently trailing along behind him. The hall was empty. Though she had only been training at the hospital for a month, Sakura couldn't remember a time that it had ever been this quiet. The deserted, white hall seemed strangely menacing; the fluorescent lights were abrasive, and the smell of illness and antiseptic seemed to burn in her sinuses.

It was enough to make her jump when she heard Neji's voice from the far end of the hall. "Naruto…Sakura!" She turned around to see that the Hyuuga boy was standing in the hall beside the doorway of the quarantine room. "Could you check and see if any other Hyuugas have d—" he trailed off with a glance into the quarantine room and amended, "—see if any of the other Hyuugas are in danger?"

The anxious, almost desperate quality of his voice only heightened Sakura's sense of unease. "Yes; of course we can." Without waiting to hear the Hyuuga boy's response, she turned to Naruto and whispered, "Let's go." All she wanted at that moment was to get as far away from the quarantine as possible. She started off at a brisk pace; leading Naruto around the first corner they came to in order to put the quarantine and its occupants completely out of sight.

Naruto made a quiet coughing noise and looked back as though to shout some words of encouragement to the Hyuuga boy before they were out of hearing range. Then he shook his head and said, "So where do you think Sasuke would be?"

"I'm not sure. Probably the ICU." She frowned. Although they were putting the quarantine farther behind them with every step, she felt a persistent sense of wrongness. _It's too quiet, _she thought. _We should have seen somebody by now._

"He…looked pretty bad, didn't he?"

"Yeah…." _Tsunade said something about being understaffed on the night shift…is that it?_ She realized that Naruto was saying something in response to her half-hearted reply and she knew that he expected her to answer him, but she couldn't bring herself to concentrate on the words coming out of his mouth. All she could think was, _If it's already the night shift, how long have we been here?_

"Hey, _Sakura!"_

She jumped and bit back a shriek as she jarred back to reality. "What, Naruto?"

"You're going the wrong way."

"W—what?"

"You said we should go to the ICU. I've been there enough times to know that we should go left here, not straight."

"Oh," She managed a wobbly smile before adding, "You're right. Sorry."

He frowned. "Are you OK?"

"I'm fine."

"Really?"

She smiled, and this time it was one of genuine appreciation. "Really. I'm just worried. That's all."

"Yeah," he sighed. "Me, too."

As though in unspoken agreement, they continued on without speaking. Sakura tried to put her unease out of her head, but the silence only amplified her anxieties. More than anything else, she wanted Naruto to say something to break it because seeing her annoyingly boisterous teammate this quiet was more frightening than the empty hospital halls or Sasuke's mysterious illness or Shikamaru's cold grief. She felt as though she should say something to _make _him speak, but all of the air had been crushed out of her lungs and no words would come out of her mouth.

Even when they reached the large, white door that marked the start of the intensive care unit, Naruto said nothing. Sakura could feel her hand shaking as she reached for the doorknob, but she didn't care. _Where is everybody? _She thought. _We definitely should have been caught by now, even if the night shift is a little understaffed. What's going on? _

Her heart was pounding against her chest so hard she could have been in the thick of a life or death mission. She realized then that she didn't want to open that heavy door. For one fleeting instant, she almost gave in to her desire to turn to Naruto and insist that they return to the quarantine. But she knew that it was ridiculous to come so far for nothing; that Naruto wouldn't hear of it even if she could come up with a logical excuse—and her hand was moving with a mind of its own, grasping the cool metal of the doorknob and turning….

And then the door burst open, bashing against her head and wrenching the knob out of her hands. Naruto jumped back with a yelp, but he wasn't quick enough to avoid Sakura as she staggered backwards. There was a moment of confused stumbling in which Naruto almost fell flat on his back, and then a voice said, "What on earth are you doing here?"

Sakura didn't recognize the woman who had spoken, but she recognized the night shift nurse's uniform she was wearing. "We're here to see Sasuke Uchiha," she said. "We're his teammates."

The woman narrowed her eyes to slits. "His teammates?" she repeated. "I was told that his teammates are supposed to be in quarantine."

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Sakura knew that they were in trouble and that she could easily get the two of them out of it. _You're the Hokage's apprentice, _she thought. _Say it; it's the truth._ But when she opened her mouth to speak, all that came out was, "Yes…we were worried about him. That's all."

The nurse pursed her lips, a look of badly-concealed fury flashing across her eyes. "You do realize that by leaving the quarantine you've compromised the safety of every worker and patient in this hospital?"

"No…we never thought of that…." Naruto trailed off with a helpless look in Sakura's direction.

Sakura knew that it wasn't too late; that she could still save them both with a little name-dropping. Instead, she said, "Is Sasuke still…?"  
"Yes, he's still alive." A muscle in the nurse's jaw twitched. "And yes, he's still very, very ill."

"Oh." Naruto squirmed back an inch, two inches away from the nurse before adding, "Look, we're really sorry if we put anybody else in danger—we didn't mean to—really! We were just stuck in that little room for so long without hearing anything and—"

"And that's exactly where you should be right now," interrupted the nurse. "Come on; I'm going to take you back there myself."

Naruto shot Sakura a look that said, _do something, _but she shook her head and fell into step behind the nurse without another word. Somehow, it was a relief to know that she didn't have to see Sasuke as she had seen him when he was shivering on the floor of his apartment. It felt dirty to have seen him so vulnerable, and she had no desire to see it again. _Things are better this way, _she thought as Naruto fell into step beside her. _I just hope that the nurse doesn't get too angry when she sees what Naruto did to the quarantine door._

* * *

Shizune only needed to take a cursory glance at the hospital records from the previous night to know that they had been tampered with. Starting with Chouza Akimichi's arrival in the Intensive Care Unit at 10:52 pm, the page was a mess of smears, smudges and outright lies. The time of Mrs. Akimichi's death had been changed from 1:35 am to 11:35 pm, placing her death a full hour before her husband's when Shizune knew for a fact that Chouza had passed before his wife. There was no record of Chouji's death at all. A visiting Sand med-nin by the name of Tomoki Matsunaga was listed as one of the doctors who had tended to Chouza between 11:00 pm and 12:00 am—but at 11:15 pm Shizune had seen that same young med-nin staggering out of a tavern so drunk he could scarcely place one foot in front of the other. She had personally escorted him back to his inn and left him in a heavy, booze-induced slumber under the care of his teammates just past midnight. But most conspicuous of all, nearly every other name on the on-duty night staff list between the hours of 10:00 pm and 4:00 am was illegible.

_It couldn't have been only one or two people, _she thought, squinting at one of the smeared names with disgust. _If that was the case, somebody would have reported tampering this obvious. For nobody to have reported it—the only way that could have happened is if everybody in the entire night staff was in on it, working together against us…._

She heard the kunai before she saw it. The distinctive _thock _of metal against wood was so sudden it seemed as though her ears were playing a nasty trick. But then she saw the blade jutting out of the top of the Hokage's desk to pin the corner of her page of hospital records to the fine wood.

Her body jerked; her feet planted on the floor, ready to leap to her feet. Her hand twitched, wanting to snap forward to snatch up the kunai that was sunk in the wood; jaws clenched and unclenched and she could taste the poisonous gas welling up in her throat, ready to launch at the aggressor. She resisted the urge to follow through on any of these knee-jerk reactions. Instead, she looked up from the kunai to see a large man in an unfamiliar uniform standing in the doorframe. "What do you want," she demanded with tendrils of the purple, poisonous gas curling from the corners of her lips.

"Where is the Hokage?"

Shizune flexed her right arm to feel the reassuring tightness of the needle launcher strapped there. "She's attending to some business at the moment."

The man chuckled. "Is she now?"

A cold chill crawled down Shizune's back at the undisguised taunt. Something about that leering voice told her beyond any shadow of doubt that this man knew everything about the drama that had played out in the hospital over the last twenty-four hours. Slowly, she inched her hand to the kunai that was embedded in the Hokage's desk. "Yes, she is." Her hand closed around the grip of the kunai and she ripped it out of the desk. "But maybe I can help you instead," she hissed, hurling the weapon at the man's chest with a flick of her wrist.

The man snapped his hand up but he was too slow to make a clean catch and the kunai buried itself in his hand with a meaty crunch. Shizune knew exactly how many major nerves ran through the hand, and she knew that the pain of severing even one of those nerves would be enough to make an average person lose consciousness in a puddle of their own vomit. Even most shinobi would be out of commission, writhing in agony. The man didn't flinch; didn't even blink. Instead, he looked at the blade that had pierced through his palm with an expression of irritation, as though it was nothing more than a mosquito buzzing around his head. And then he did something that left Shizune's jaw gaping with shock: he seized the handle and pulled it free with a slow, wet _schook._

"Maybe you can," he said, voice cold, expressionless. "See, I came here to kill an annoying lady with blond hair. Guess it doesn't matter if I kill an annoying lady with black hair instead."

And for the first time, Shizune realized that she was in very real danger.

* * *

**Author's Notes:** I tried very hard to make the medical information in the first section sound plausible (or at least, plausible within the context of the Naruto world). I put in a lot of research in order to be as accurate as possible, but I'm not exactly a med student. My resources are pretty much limited to the Internet. If you see any glaring inaccuracies, let me know so I can (try to) fix them.

Thanks to Falconeyes, LittleMana, Xavien blue, Reality Inhibited, Af, and unreproachablephoenix for reviewing the last chapter and to all of the people who added this to favorites or alerts. I really appreciate all of the feedback!


	6. The Smell of Revolution

CHAPTER SIX

Konoha hospital lay on the same road as the Hokage tower, and the distance between the two was less than a half mile. It took less than ten minutes to get from one to the other, even when the street was packed with people. A reasonably fit shinobi could cover the distance in less than three minutes if the occasion called for it. Tsunade would have reached the hospital in less than two if not for the crowd of people that choked the street outside its doors.

Some she recognized as shinobi, but most were common citizens of Konoha: merchants, innkeepers—Tsunade even thought she saw the woman who owned the bath house somewhere in the crush of bodies. Several hundred meters away, she could see the main entrance of the hospital over the sea of heads in the crowd. There was a big, oafish-looking man in an unrecognizable uniform standing there, shouting something to the crowd. Tsunade strained to hear what the man was saying, but she was too far away to hear the words and his voice was nothing more than a raw shout.

Tsunade tried to thread through the swarm of people, but they were packed so tightly together that squeezing between them wasn't an option and nobody seemed inclined to move out of her way. "What is this," she demanded of a reedy villager. "What's going on?"

Instead of offering a reply, the scrawny boy looked at her with his eyes so wide that white showed all the way around the dark iris. Then he whipped around to the person standing next to him; a bony girl who might have been his sister, and whispered, "The Hokage's here."

She gave a little jump and whispered the same message to the man in front of her and within seconds there was a rolling, hissing chorus of "Hokage, Hokage, Hokage…." The burly man at the head of the crowd abruptly stopped his shouting as the whispering spread through the crowd. He held up his hand and the buzz of whispers trailed. Then he turned his attention to the back of the crowd to look directly at Tsunade.

From this distance the man's face was a featureless blur. Shapeless nose; undistinguished chin; eyes two black holes. Even so, Tsunade felt her guts twist under his glare. "What's all this," she demanded. She was pleased to note that her voice still held a note of authority in spite of her unease.

A buzzing wave of mumbled responses rolled through the crowd, none of them discernable from the next. Then a voice rang out from the crowd, "The plague! Tell us about the plague!"

She frowned, a pucker appearing above the bridge of her nose. "Plague? There is no plague."

A jumble of shouting broke out and Tsunade could only catch confused snatches through the clamor:

"Yes; the plague!"

"Hyuuga clan—"

"—dying—"

"—Akimichis—"

"—one hundred percent mortality—"

"—spreading uncontrollably!"

Tsunade's frown deepened. _Most of that isn't true, _she thought. _Who's been spreading these rumors? _She looked to the man in front of the hospital doors. He hadn't taken his eyes off of her. "There is no plague!" she yelled over the shouting in the crowd. "Please, all of you return to your homes! You're safe! Now let me through—please!"

There was a stretch of uncertain silence. Some of the people in the crowd shifted from one foot to the other or looked around at the people around them as if to gauge their reactions before forming their own opinions. None of the shinobi would look at her face; their eyes were trained on the ground. Then the voice of the man who stood in front of the hospital doors cut through the silence, every word clear: "If there isn't any plague, why is she in such a hurry to get into the hospital?"

The crowd remained quiet, but Tsunade sensed a current of fear snap through the air at the man's words. She knew that she needed to say something to dispel their fear, but she was even more aware that she needed to get inside—fast. _You are the Hokage, _she reminded herself. _They wouldn't harm their own Hokage. _"For the last time; there isn't any plague, so please—"

A brassy screech cut through the air: _"Liar!"_

Tsunade stopped short, biting back her words in disbelief. Too late, she recognized that the crowd was on the verge of panic; that their fear was converting them into something ugly. Unrecognizable. Desperate. She realized then—too late—that _something_ had been teetering on the verge of breaking, and that screeching accusation had tipped that _something _over the edge, irretrievable.

She didn't know where the first strike came from. All she saw was a mass of people surging forward to surround her in its stifling crush—and then there was a hail of fists and feet on all sides and the gut-freezing realization that she _couldn't _fight back because she was the Hokage and these were her people and it was the duty of the Hokage to protect these people, to save them, to keep them from harm. People were screaming things—insults by the sound of it—but she couldn't tell whether they were directed at her or at other people in the crowd or if it was just screaming for the sake of screaming. It was an animal sound that told her only that these people had been pushed so far that their fear couldn't be satisfied with anything but blood.

Somebody's fist crashed into her nose. She heard a crunch, tasted blood in her sinuses, felt it pour over her lips and down her chin, hot, salty. Then the pain hit, radiating across her cheeks, up into her eyes—so much everything blinked black. It was the pain that brought her out of her disbelief and saved her.

A fist smashed into her ribs from the left. She caught it, coughing with the force of the blow, and pushed. The owner of the fist flew backwards, collided with the people behind to send them sprawling on the ground. She saw a kick coming, aimed for her knee and caught the leg to toss its owner into the mass of bodies in front of her.

She didn't know how long it took her to force her way through the crowd. The man hadn't moved from in front of the hospital doors. Tsunade knew she was hurt and that it was bad, but she didn't care. She wanted to snarl at that man in his spotless brown uniform. Instead, she reached forward to seize him by the front of his flak jacket. He did nothing to fight back. With one hand, she lifted him off his feet and tossed him out of the way. Then she staggered through the doors and into the relative quiet of the hospital reception area.

* * *

_WUMPF!_

The intruder's ham-sized fist hurtled through the air, missing Shizune's face by the barest millimeter. She felt the wind of it against her cheek and caught a salty, sickening whiff of the sweat and blood on the man's hand. There was a snapping noise as the momentum of the punch sent his fist smashing into the wall behind her. Shizune didn't know whether she was hearing cracking bones or splintering wood and she didn't dare to waste the time it took to look and see. Instead, she twisted away from the man and skirted along the wall until she was out of his striking distance.

The man said nothing as he stepped away from the wall. Shizune found herself wishing that he would scream or curse—anything to give voice to the pain in his injured hand; anything to prove that he was capable of feeling pain. His face remained expressionless as he made a clumsy charge forward.

Shizune danced farther out of his reach and shot her final round of poisoned needles from the launcher on her right arm. A glinting flash of silver needles whisked through the air. The man took the attack without any attempt to dodge. Shizune could see the poison-tipped needles half-buried in the left side of the man's chest, but still there was no scream, no groan, no grimace.

_Soldier pills, _she thought, but even as the idea entered her head she rejected it. Even a fatal dose of the chakra-enhancing drug couldn't allow an opponent to ignore a kunai through the hand or a round of poisonous needles to the chest, but the man had made no move to dodge any of her attacks. For all the damage she inflicted, he continued to advance, herding her around the room in erratic charges. He always struck with powerful fists and feet whenever he came within arms' reach, but his attacks were almost laughably easy to dodge and he never landed a hit.

_What's the matter with him, _she wondered. _He's a big, clumsy brute but even a big, clumsy brute gets lucky eventually. He's pulling his punches. _Another enormous, bloodied fist flew through the air. Shizune set her jaw and didn't move and the hit that should have hit square on her nose jerked aside, glancing harmlessly off her cheek. They stood less than six inches apart, him dwarfing her with his bulk, but the man made no other move to attack.

_He doesn't care if he kills me. He doesn't care if he dies. Does he want to die? Is that it? But why go to all this trouble? It doesn't make any sense. Could he be crazy? _Shizune looked into the man's eyes and saw nothing but sanity in them. She wanted to yell; wanted to scream, _"What is it? What do you want?"_ And then she smelled the smoke.

She tried to hide her shock, but she felt her face pull into an expression of horror. The man's face twisted into a dark grin. "So you smell it now too, huh?" he grunted. "You know what that smell is?" His grin stretched wider and then he answered his own question without waiting for her to reply: "That, my dear lady, is the smell of revolution."

"W-what? What are you talking about?"

The man turned away and crossed the room to stand by one of the large windows. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Shizune knew she should attack while his attention was directed elsewhere, but she was rooted to the spot with shock as the acrid stench of burning filled her nose. "What have you done," she demanded. "What's happening?"

Across the room, the man was busy trying to wrench open the window. Shizune vaguely remembered that that window had always stuck, but the man was forcing it open inch by screeching inch. "Come over here," he said. His voice was so docile it was almost friendly. "There's something I want to show you."

Shizune didn't want to do what the intruder had asked her to do, but somehow her feet were moving and then she was standing beside the man. His breath was hot against her ear as he whispered, "Look outside." Even though it was the last place she wanted to look, she found herself looking out the window to see a mass of people gathered around the doors of the hospital. There were so many people packed together that all she could see was a black, shadowy blur. _Tsunade is heading straight for them, _she realized.

"Like I said," whispered the man. "A revolution." A sudden movement and he was standing on the windowsill blocking her view.

"What are you doing?" she shrilled.

The man laughed. "Don't you get it? There are only two ways out of this place. One is slow and painful. I think I prefer the other option." He spread his arms wide. "Too bad we'll never see the new world." And with that, he leaned back until his feet tipped over the edge of the window sill. Shizune let out a bitten shriek as he plummeted out of view.

A waft of acrid smoke drifted in through the empty window. It rolled across her face, making her cough, making her choke. Careful to keep her eyes away from the place where the man had landed, Shizune looked down to confirm what she had known and feared. Far below, a wildflower of flame was consuming the base of the Hokage tower.

* * *

Walking beside the night nurse and with the ICU safely out of sight, Sakura felt a seed of guilt. _I should have insisted that she let us visit Sasuke, _she thought. _She might not have listened to me as one of Sasuke's teammates, but she would have listened to the Hokage's apprentice. If he's still as sick as before, he might be in a lot of pain. What if he's afraid? Or—_she swallowed, reluctant to think the word that she had avoided considering for so long. With a concentrated effort, she forced the word to come: _dying._

Sakura felt her throat go tight as the word blared through her head. She didn't know whether she was about to cry or whether she was about to be sick. _Calm down—just calm down. It's not like saying it makes it any more or less true. _She frowned. _Shikamaru said that. Among other things._

Anger flared as she remembered the boy's words: _Nothing matters to me. _But…_No. I can't be mad at him—he's a lot worse off than we are. Especially after what I said to him. _She flinched at the memory of her own cruel words, meant to cut straight to the bone. She realized then that she didn't want to go back to the quarantine and face him again; not after all she had said.

To take her mind off that unpleasant topic, she turned her attention to the night nurse who had managed to push between Naruto and her. The woman was short; barely five feet tall, and the layer of soft pudge around her middle was noticeable enough for Sakura to know that she wasn't a shinobi. She reminded Sakura of a stuffed teddy bear she'd slept with until she was six years old; the type of lady who gave candy to her nieces and nephews. Sakura knew that the silent, florescent-white hospital halls shouldn't have seemed intimidating now that they had the round little woman to safely guide them back to the quarantine. Even so, her nerves were gnawing at the pit of her stomach worse than ever—and it seemed as though she wasn't the only one who felt uneasy.

From the second they had started back in the direction of the quarantine, Naruto had begun to talk to the nurse. At first, Sakura had dismissed the frenzied quality of his voice as concern for Sasuke. Then she realized that his jabbering was so frantic that he wasn't even stopping to hear the nurse answer his questions. _Naruto likes to talk—but even he doesn't usually talk this much, _she thought.

Somewhere to her right, Naruto continued his one-man conversation: "I heard that they keep the lights on in the halls in hospitals all the time without ever turning them off which is cool for the people that work at night, but it makes it really hard to know what time it is because there's no sunlight in the halls so Sakura and me and everybody else in the quarantine were wondering what time it was and whether we were going to get anything to eat before tomorrow—unless it's tomorrow already. Do you know what time it is?"

Sakura wasted so much time trying to untangle the rambling monologue that she almost missed hearing the nurse say that it was half past ten. It seemed as though Naruto hadn't heard at all—he kept talking without pause. "Anyways, there's no sunlight in the halls and you can't hear anything, either. Somebody told me that's because the walls are soundproofed so nothing disturbs the patients, but I don't remember if it was granny Tsunade or if it was Shizune or if it was Sakura or who said it."

_I told him that, _Sakura thought. _And I heard it from Shizune. What's the matter with him? What's the matter with me? Why are we both so jumpy? It's not like we got into any trouble for busting out of the quarantine. Nothing serious, anyways. All she's doing is taking us back to the—_"Oh," she whispered, coming to a jerky halt as it dawned on her.

A few steps ahead, the nurse stopped. "What's the matter?"

The words were so full of concern Sakura felt ridiculous for her dawning suspicion. "Nothing," she replied. "It's just…didn't you say that you were taking us back to the quarantine?"

A sugary smile split across the nurse's face. "Yes; that's where we're going."

"No, we're not." She nervously licked her lips and caught Naruto's eyes with her own.

He trailed off his rambling narrative to stare back at her, wide-eyed. "Yeah," he said. "This isn't the way we came—we're closer to the morgue than the place we came from."

Sakura examined the small lady's face. _Did her eyes just narrow? Did that smile falter—just for a second? _It was impossible to know for sure. "Of course I'm taking you back to the quarantine," said the nurse. "Why would I be taking you anywhere else?"

Naruto and Sakura exchanged a look, each prodding the other to come up with a feasible response. Naruto looked as though he was ready to offer up an answer when the lights flickered, lightning-fast off to on to off and the hall went pitch dark.

A voice—the nurse—sighed, "What? Already?"

Sakura didn't know whether the sound had come from in front of her or if the nurse had managed to skirt around behind her in the darkness. She was disoriented, blinking her eyes uselessly against the sudden dark. Naruto's voice screamed, "Sakura, look out! She's got a kunai!"

_What…? _Sakura took a faltering step back. Something sharp grazed her arm. She heard it thud against the wall with a dull _tock _and felt a thin trickle of blood on her arm. Somebody was beside her, breathing heavily. She struck blind and her fist connected with something—she heard a smack of skin against skin—but she didn't know if she'd managed to hit the nurse or if she'd hit Naruto by mistake.

From somewhere in the dark—above? Behind? Beside?—Naruto's voice shouted, "Leave Sakura alone!" She heard scuffling, thought she heard more than one Naruto in the fray (_Shadow clones? _She wondered. _Is it that serious?), _and the clank of a kunai falling to the ground. Then everything was silent.

Sakura shivered and reached for her weapon pouch, straining all the while to hear something that would help her place where Naruto was and where the nurse was. Her fingers had just curled around the reassuring grip of a kunai. Then—_WHAM! _Something struck her against the temple hard enough to make her stumble back against the wall. The world was a kaleidoscope of flashing lights behind her eyes and she slashed blindly. She met nothing but air.

"I—said—leave—her—alone—you—_whoa!" _There was a loud _thud _and a groan from Naruto. Sakura frowned. _Did she throw him through the air? _She shook her head. _She shouldn't have been able to do that—she doesn't have the muscle._

Naruto screamed, furious. She heard him charge forward, and then a muffled voice was saying, "Naruto, it's me! I took her down, so—_so stop trying to kill me, you idiot!"_

Sakura's frown deepened into an expression of pure confusion. _Is that…? _There was a loud whirring noise that made her calming heart jerk back into an insane drum roll in her chest. Then everything was bathed in the gray half-light of the bulbs that ran on the emergency back-up generator.

Her eyes had just begun to get used to the inky darkness and they watered against the light, but she was able to see Naruto with his arms hugged around his belly and wheezing against the wall opposite. The nurse was on the ground, bleeding and unconscious, and standing above the nurse with her hands curled into angry fists was the Hokage herself.

For one second, Sakura felt complete relief _(Tsunade is here…we're safe now!) _but then her smile darkened into a horrified grimace when she realized that her sensei was drenched with blood. Although Tsunade was standing with her back to her, Sakura could see that her left shoulder was hunched at an impossible angle _(Dislocated? _She wondered. _Broken?) _and there was so much blood that even her hair was matted with it. Sakura couldn't see her sensei's face, but Naruto's expression was enough for her to guess that the damage was just as bad as what she could already see.

"Tsunade…what—" Naruto coughed and hugged his arms tighter around his abdomen. "What happened to you?"

"I'm sorry, Naruto. I didn't mean to hit so hard. Did I hurt you?"

"What? No!" He sucked in a deep breath and made an admirable effort to stand up straight. "I'm fine. But…what happened? Why are you—"

"Are you all right?" Sakura interrupted. Tsunade's posture went rigid, as though surprised by the sound of Sakura's voice. Then she turned to look over her shoulder and Sakura choked back a horrified gasp.

The Hokage's face was marbled gray, black, purple. Her nose was a messy smear of blood and something clear and thick. One eye was swollen shut and the other was blinking back a thick dribble of blood that was dripping in from across her forehead. There was a wound at her jaw line that was so ragged it looked like a bite mark. "Who—who did this?" Sakura whispered.

"Never mind that," Tsunade replied. "Come over here. Now."

Sakura nodded and hurried across the hall to stand next to Naruto. Her heart was in her throat and she had to fight the embarrassing impulse to reach for the boy's hand for some form of reassurance that everything was going to be all right; that maybe it was still all right to believe that the Hokage was playing a cruel joke. She wanted to look at anything but the beaten form of her sensei, but somehow, she couldn't pull her eyes away from the savage wound at the woman's jaw line. And then Tsunade said, "There isn't time to say this with any tact, so I'm going to speak plainly. Konoha is under attack."

"_What?"_

"From who?"

"Why—"

"How did—"

Tsunade held up a hand for silence. Sakura swallowed back the questions that were tickling in the back of her throat. Beside her, she could feel Naruto shaking with the effort of keeping his own mouth shut. Only when they were both quiet did Tsunade go on.

"I don't know who it is, I don't know why. None of that matters right now." She paused to wipe at the trail of blood that was running into her eye. It smeared across her forehead like paint. "The only thing that matters right now is the mission I'm about to give you."

Sakura shook her head in disbelief. She couldn't understand how Tsunade could sound so composed under the circumstances. _This isn't possible—none of this is possible! It's a dream…it has to be! _But Tsunade's voice sounded very real as she said, "Gather as many of the genin as you can and get out of Konoha immediately. The Sand is our ally now. Go there and bring back reinforcements."

"But Tsunade, we can fight too! What about—"

"No, Naruto," Tsunade interrupted, taking a lurching step towards the two of them. "I want you to treat this as an A-rank mission. No. Make that S-rank. You are not to stay here under any circumstances. Do I make myself clear?"

"Y-yeah…but…."

"Good. Shikamaru and Neji and Hinata are already on their way out, and I've appointed Shikamaru as leader. Go with them if you can. And don't leave the hospital by the main doors."

"But…Tsunade, will you be all right?" Sakura queried.

The old woman's lips twitched into a pained smile. "Don't worry about me. Remember, I can heal myself. I'll be fine. Now _go!"_

Sakura felt as though every muscle in her body was numb. Naruto took a faltering step forward and then stopped, looking back and forth between Sakura and Tsunade. _"Go!" _Tsunade shouted. "Hurry!"

And then they were running down the halls, everything a gray blur of shocked panic. Even though she remembered Tsunade's warning about the hospital's main doors, and even though she knew all of the other exits in the building, she ran without thought, wanting to get away without understanding what it was they were trying to escape. She didn't know how long she would have kept running panicked if Naruto hadn't grabbed her arm and whispered, "Sakura, what about Sasuke?"

The words of the nurse came back to her: _"Yes, he is still alive. And yes, he's still very, very ill." _She could feel a sob building in her throat. _He's not safe here…but if he's still that sick, will he make it to the Sand village? What if by trying to save him, we end up killing him instead? He shouldn't leave the hospital—not if he's as bad as he was this morning. _Even as she came to this conclusion, she knew in her heart that she couldn't leave him behind. He was the one boy she had spent countless hours trying to impress—the boy she'd tried so hard to befriend, and perhaps one day, to be more than just a team mate or friend. Her first and only crush. "We have to take him with us," she said.

_It's best this way, _she thought as she led the way through the twisting hallways towards the intensive care unit. _Kakashi always said that people who abandon their team mates are worse than scum. He would be proud._

This time there was no hesitation when they reached the white door that led to the ICU. Sakura shoved the door open without a second thought and they barreled through together. The hall beyond seemed even darker than the others they had raced through. _Was it really darker? Were the back-up generators weaker in the ICU than in the rest of the hospital? Or was it all a trick of her snapping nerves?_

It was so dark that it was hard to see inside the rooms from outside, but she led Naruto past the first rooms without bothering to look inside. He didn't lag or attempt to look into any of the rooms they had bypassed. They both knew where they needed to go without saying a word.

The first thing Sakura saw when they reached Sasuke's room were the tubes. Tubes in his arms, tubes in his chest, tubes in his nose, tubes down his throat—so many tubes she didn't know what all of them were for. Sasuke looked even worse than he had when they had found him that morning. The rash had darkened to a bruised purple color and he was sweating so badly that the hospital sheets were almost transparent where they clung against his body.

"Sasuke," she whispered, feeling tears well in her eyes. _He's so sick…I haven't had enough training to deal with this. Can I even keep him alive until we reach the Sand? _She wanted to let the tears fall so badly. They were there, hot and thick and threatening to spill out over her cheeks. Then she noticed that Naruto had moved forward to the bedside, and that he was busy yanking at the tubes in Sasuke's left arm. Another handful of tubing was already dangling in the air like the cut strings of a marionette.

"_Naruto, stop!" _she shrieked.

Naruto wheeled around to face her, eyes wild. "We can't leave him here, Sakura! We have to…have to get him out!"

"Get away from him, Naruto."

"We're not leaving him here!"

Sakura saw him make a blind grab for the tubes. "Naruto, you get away from him right now!"

He bared his teeth in a furious snarl. "Damn it, we _can't _leave him here!" He pulled at a tube and there was a strange, choked sound from the bed behind him. Sakura's eyes went wide as she realized which tube he'd gotten hold of. Abandoning all pretense of trying to calm the blonde boy down, she lurched forward and shoved him out of her way hard enough to dump him onto the ground.

Sasuke's eyes were wide open, an expression of panic on his face. She saw his lips working, trying to form words around the tube in his mouth but the only sound he produced was a dry gag. His hands were flying to pull at the tube. She pinned them, which only caused the feverish boy to become more frantic. "Sasuke, no," she said, fighting to hold him down. "Calm down. It's all right—it's me. Sakura. Sasuke, listen to me! Stop moving!"

"Sakura," Naruto whispered from behind her. "What—"

"You can't just go ripping IV lines out like that, Naruto!" she snapped. "You could have _killed _him!" She was so furious she wanted to scream at him until she was hoarse. Another dry gag from Sasuke brought her attention back to the bed. "Sasuke, _stop moving!" _

Sasuke's weak struggles only seemed grow more frantic. _Is he so sick he can't even understand what I'm saying? _She wondered. Aloud, she said, "Hold him still, Naruto."

"What?"

"Hold him, I said!"

Naruto numbly stepped up beside her and took her place in restraining the Uchiha boy. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to take that tube out before he hurts himself."

"Do you know how to do that?"

Sakura laughed hoarsely. "I have no idea."

At this response, Naruto's face went an unhealthy shade of green. He squeezed his eyes shut as Sakura brought her hands up to grip the tube that disappeared into Sasuke's throat. _I don't blame him, _she thought. _I wish I could close my eyes, too._

She pulled at the tube, wanting to remove it in one smooth motion. Sasuke's head jerked forward, following the pull and the panic in his eyes intensified into outright terror. She swallowed back a scream, resisted the urge to throw up, and thought, _You can do this. You have to do this._

She kept hold of the tube with one trembling hand, held his forehead with the other and pulled. The tube slid easily up, out of his mouth, and then Sasuke was shuddering with phlegm-racked coughing against the irritation.

The other tubes were easier to manage. Sakura disconnected them as quickly as she could and said, "OK, done. Let's go."

Naruto didn't move. "Sakura, all he has is a hospital robe. Where are his normal clothes?"

"Let's go, Naruto."

Sakura watched Naruto scoop up Sasuke's shuddering body swaddled in the sweat-soaked hospital sheets before leading them back out into the hall. "Why doesn't he have any of his other clothes? We can't take him outside like this—he needs something else. I mean, he's practically na—"

"There isn't time," Sakura interrupted. She recognized the dazed quality in Naruto's voice. _He's so worked up he's not even thinking about what he's saying. _"He has the sheet and the hospital gown. It's the best we can do."

"But Sakura—"

"Naruto, we have to go _now!"_

Naruto glanced down at the damp bundle of sheets in his arms and sighed, but said nothing more.

* * *

The streets of Konoha were so choked with people it was impossible to see from one side to the other. All around, people were kicking, thrusting, jabbing, punching, screaming, dying. The air was thick with the smell of sweat and blood.

Buried in the press of bodies, Shikamaru felt like he was struggling in a riptide that dragged against every effort he made to move forward. It was impossible to keep Neji and Hinata in sight while squeezing through the packed street. The best he could do was pray that they were both somewhere close by while he focused on avoiding any stray attacks from both the invading forces and his fellow Konoha shinobi. He could feel hot, sticky blood on his clothes. It wasn't his own blood; that was all he knew for sure.

The crowd seemed to grow denser with every step forward. _We'll never get through this way. We should go back the way we came and find another route, _he thought. He looked over his shoulder for the Hyuugas, but they were nowhere to be seen. _Damn. There's no way to tell them, and I can't assume they'll see me in this crowd. What's happening up there? Why is everybody gravitating in this direction?_

He craned his neck and saw a crude platform in the middle of the road far ahead. Even from a distance, it looked as though it had been hastily slapped together. At the center of the platform, a tall pole stuck straight up in the air. There was a man in a strange uniform hovering in front of the pole with a drawn kunai. A second man was pacing back and forth on top of it, shouting to the crowd below.

Shikamaru stared up at the platform and shuddered. _It looks like a funeral pyre, _he thought. _I'm not going any closer to that thing. _He looked around the crowd for any sign of Hinata or Neji and saw nothing. He was about to call out to them when the man standing at the foot of the pole shifted, allowing him to see it clearly.

There was a person bound to the foot of the pole. She was struggling furiously against the ropes, but they held fast as the man brought his kunai up against her throat. Shikamaru felt as though all his internal organs had turned to ice. _"Ino," _he whispered.

* * *

**Author's Notes:** Yay for action! This chapter was just a warm-up compared to what's coming up. The next chapter is almost twice as long as this one, so I hope you're all excited! Also, with the next update, I'll be posting a shiny new summary. A long chapter and a new summary—fun stuff, right?

Thanks to LittleMana for reviewing chapter five...you are so consistent! Getting reviews really makes my day and motivates me to work _faster._ Keep an eye out for chapter seven!


	7. Night of the Raining Ash

CHAPTER SEVEN

Tsunade kept her eyes trained on Naruto and Sakura as they sprinted down the hall. Even before the shadows began to obscure them from view, she felt her legs begin to tremble. It was her right hamstring—somebody had gotten in a lucky slash with a shuriken in the catastrophe outside and now the muscle was juddering uncontrollably. She knew she should take the weight off of it before her leg gave out. Instead, she focused all her attention on the two retreating genin.

Sakura and Naruto were so far down the hall that they were no more than a pair of indistinct black figures. The lighting was so poor that it was impossible to tell which of the two was which. Tsunade's knee jolted, causing her to sway, but she forced herself to stand straighter and promised her hamstring that she would sit down soon enough if it would just _hold on _for a few more seconds. _I can't show any sign of how badly I'm injured while those two are still in sight, _she thought. _It wouldn't do to have them look back and see me hunched against the wall like some weak little old lady. Not even if I feel like one at the moment._ She tried a smirk, but the pain in her jaw made it closer to a grimace.

The dark blurs that were Naruto and Sakura disappeared around a corner. Tsunade listened and heard their thundering footsteps dying away. She felt her shuddering knee pop forward and knew that this time there was no way to prevent a fall. Everything between her knee and hip felt dead. She tried to shift some of her balance to her uninjured leg to soften the fall, but the impact was still hard enough to jar up her arms and across her aching chest. The shock was enough to prompt a barking cough that brought something frothy into her mouth. It tasted like pennies.

Dragging her injured leg behind her, she crawled close enough to the wall to lean against it in a tired slouch. _Broken nose, _she thought. _Various cuts and lacerations. Bruised ribs. _She risked a glance at her right arm and wished she hadn't. The sleeve of her jacket was so soaked with blood it looked black. There was a jagged tear near the shoulder and through it she could see the wound still welling out blood. _They almost got the brachial artery. Bastards. Internal bleeding. Severed hamstring. If they think they can take me out that easily, they're going to be sorely surprised._ A laugh bubbled up out of her mouth. It tasted like the cough. Like pennies.

She could feel the chakra straining against its seal in her forehead. Black trails were snaking out across her face, cool against her burning skin. She brought her hands up into the appropriate seal and muttered, "Seal release." Unhindered, the black trails erupted out across her face, down her neck across her shoulders. "Mitotic regeneration."

The rush of chakra was dizzying, stronger than any soldier pill. Her hair and clothing rippled against a shock wave of chakra. She was drunk with it—warm, disoriented. Her bubbling wounds coagulated into stiff, red scar material that faded to brown to flesh. She could feel the bones in her nose scrape against each other, reforming to their rightful places. The pain in her ribs dulled to a heavy throb to a vague ache to nothing.

The first thing she felt when the last warm tingle of the chakra surge died away was the cold, bloody sleeve of her jacket stuck against her arm. "Ugh," she groaned. She tried to reach around to pull it off, but she was suddenly so _tired. _Even the thought of how much energy it would take to shrug the filthy thing off her shoulders was enough to make her want to curl up into a ball of exhaustion.

_That cost a lot more chakra than I was expecting it to, _she thought. _My body hasn't had time to store much up since the fight with Orochimaru. I'll have to be careful. I can't afford to use it again for a while._

She made a move as though to stand and ended up slouched even lower against the wall. Her eyes went wide. _I must have used almost all of my chakra to feel this weak. I can't fight like this._ She balled her hand into a fist and punched the wall, knowing all the while it was childish to vent her frustration by breaking things. The plaster didn't even crack. "Damn it," she whispered. _There's no way around it. I have to find someplace safe to rest while my chakra reserves build back up._

Using the wall as a crutch, she managed to get to her feet and hobble forward step by fatigued step. _I'll sleep for only a couple of hours. Maybe by then the rioting will have quieted down enough to make sense of whose ass I need to kick. As soon as I wake up I can pop a couple of soldier pills. That should give me enough chakra to deal with the bastard behind all of this._

From somewhere in the shadows behind her, a voice jeered, "What's this? Running away?"

Tsunade came to a dead halt. She'd only heard that voice once before, but there was no mistaking it. Willing herself to stay on her feet, she turned around to face who had spoken. Burly frame, immaculate brown uniform…it was the man who had been at the head of the crowd on the hospital steps. From this close, she could see his face clearly enough to see the flecks of green in his brown eyes. There was a scar over his lip that pulled his mouth up into a sneer. _Or maybe he's sneering all on his own, _Tsunade thought. Aloud, she said, "So you're behind all this, huh?"

The man shrugged. "I prefer to think that it's the people behind a revolution. Not just one man. After all, I haven't done anything to you. Yet."

"Yet? What's that supposed to mean? You going to kill me? Go ahead and try it." She raised her fists. The man took a tentative step back.

"I'd prefer not to kill you. Somebody as powerful as you doesn't have to die like this. No. I'm here to make you a deal."  
Tsunade pulled her face into a sneer that matched the one on the man's face. "Why should I bargain with you? You've tried to kill me, you've put my village at risk, you've panicked civilians, and you've killed several of my best shinobi with your little poison stunt. Give me one reason why I shouldn't kill you right here."

"Because, my dear Hokage, this is a revolution. The reign of the shinobi is coming to an end. If you want us to spare your precious village, you'll listen to our demands."

Tsunade slowly shook her head. "You're insane." Moving carefully to avoid drawing any attention, she slipped her hand into her sleeve to feel the reassuring grip of the kunai she kept with her for emergencies.

"No. I'm perfectly sane. All you shinobi squabbling amongst yourselves, waging wars over trifles, killing each other because of petty matters of pride—that's crazy. I want to end all that."

"Don't we all," Tsunade replied. She inched the kunai out of its holder, holding it ready.

"I want to see a world without war. Unfortunately, you shinobi have demonstrated that peace treaties and alliances only lead to more fighting. Since you are incapable of keeping peace amongst yourselves, the only solution I see is eradication."

Tsunade tightened her grip on the kunai. "So what you're saying is that you want to end war…with more war."

The man's smirk was back, twisted as ever. "That's why I'm offering you this deal. Because I don't want to fight. If you are willing to hand Konoha over to us and resign your position as Hokage, we will spare your life as well as the lives of your villagers."

"And the shinobi?"

The man's smirk faltered. "Like I said, they must be eradicated. But don't worry. You need not take part in that. So. Do we have a deal?"

Smiling sweetly, Tsunade took a step forward, bringing her within striking distance. With a flick of her wrist, the kunai was exposed. Another fluid motion and she was bringing the kunai down, sweeping towards his jugular.

And then—_pain! _Her arm spasmed against the unexpected agony and her grip on the kunai went slack. There was something hot and sticky dribbling down her back, plastering her shirt against her body. Pain was radiating from the fleshy, sensitive stretch above her shoulder blade, down her back, across her chest, down her arm. The man in front of her grinned. "Your timing is impeccable. As usual."

Tsunade turned to look behind her, past the kunai that was buried up to its grip in her shoulder, to see a squat woman in a night nurse's uniform standing there. _An accomplice, _she thought. _I should have known._

There was a blow to her chest from the front that sent her reeling back, almost colliding with the round little lady behind her. She sucked in a convulsive breath and coughed and there was hot blood in her mouth, bubbling over her lips. And then the pain exploded through her chest. It squeezed her lungs, it bunched the muscles in her back, it screamed through her neck.

She staggered against the wall and her legs shook, wanting to give out with the pain. It was clouding her head, it was her entire world, it was—the man was talking again, standing so close to her that she could feel his sour breath on her face. "I hope you're proud of yourself," he said. "I hope you can die at peace, knowing that you've condemned your village to death."

Keeping her attention on the feel of her feet on the ground, on the smoothness of the wall behind her back, anywhere but on the pain in her chest, Tsunade glared back at the man. She wanted to cry hateful tears, wanted to scream, but the pain in her chest wouldn't allow her to speak. All she could do was listen as he went on, calm as could be: "Tonight all of Konoha will be purged. By sunrise, there will be no man, woman, or child alive that calls this cesspit home."

Tsunade wanted to tell that man how much she hated him at that moment. She wanted to tell him one last time exactly how insane he was. More than anything else, she wanted to tell him that Konoha wouldn't die without a fight. Instead, she spat a mouthful of blood and brought her uninjured, quivering left arm up so she could grab at the grip of the kunai buried in her chest. Without pausing to consider the consequences, she yanked the kunai out, stabbed forward and slashed up.

The man bellowed and leaped backwards. Tsunade laughed. Blood poured from the wound in her chest, spurted from her mouth and nose. She slumped down to the ground, leaving a trail of red on the wall behind her. A steel-toed boot was flying through the air, aimed for her face. She saw it coming and with the last of her strength managed to twist and take the blow to her ear instead of her nose. The impact snapped her head back to strike the wall behind her. Fireworks exploded behind her eyes in a dizzy muddle of color.

Then the man swam back into her field of vision. The left half of his face was a mess of blood. He was clutching at his eye and something darker than blood was oozing through his fingers, down his face. Tsunade felt a faint edge of disappointment. Her strike had been crippling, but not lethal.

"You…_bitch!" _screamed the man. His face was mottled purple. He lurched forward, pushing the woman in the nurse's uniform out of his way to kneel on the ground next to Tsunade.

Tsunade felt his hands prying at her hand, the one that still clutched the kunai. She tried to will her fingers to hold to the grip, but they were cold, heavy, dead. The man pried it free with ease. "I'll kill you!"

Lips working with the effort, she rasped, "Go ahead. You'll never kill…never…never kill…." With her rapidly dimming vision, she saw him raising the kunai to strike. Her body felt numb. Her tongue was a clumsy lump of lead in her mouth. She closed her eyes and willed herself to grate out the words she needed to say: "You'll never kill Konoha."

The kunai fell. Her world went black.

* * *

When she first pushed the back hospital door open, Sakura thought that it had begun to snow. She stood in the doorframe, staring at the gray fluff that was powdering the deserted alley in front of her in disbelief. _It's too late in the year for snow, _she thought with a frown. _What's going on?_

From behind her, still inside the dark hall, Naruto puffed, "Sakura, what is it? Why did you stop?"

Sakura didn't answer. Instead, she thought, _It's not even cold enough out here for snow._ Slowly, she extended a hand to catch a drifting flake in her palm. The substance felt feathery against her skin. It wasn't cold, and it didn't melt. Her frown deepened, along with her confusion. She tilted her hand, coaxing the feathery thing in her hand towards her fingertips. Bits of it broke off as it slid across her skin, leaving flakes of black, gray, and white. She pinched it between her fingers and it crumbled into a dark smudge. Her throat constricted as she realized that what she was holding was a flake of ash.

Naruto's voice cut through her thoughts, making her jump. "Sakura, what's wrong?"

"It's…." She trailed off with a slow shake of her head. She turned around to look back into the half-light of the hospital corridor. The door clicked shut behind her, blocking the grotesque flurry of gray from view.

Naruto was hunched and sweating with the effort of carrying Sasuke cradled in front of him. With an awkward lurch, Naruto adjusted his grip on the taller boy and wiped his running face on the shoulder of his jacket. "What is it, Sakura? Is it really bad out there?"

She fought back the impulse to start a hysterical rant _(It's raining ash! How is that possible? Where is it coming from? Why is it raining ash?) _and held out her smudged fingers. Naruto leaned close enough that she could feel his breath on her hands. A bead of sweat trembled at the tip of his nose then plopped onto her palm, oily and warm.

"Is that ash?"

Sakura nodded. Another blob of sweat was hovering at the end of Naruto's nose like a dribble of snot. She moved her hand out of the way before adding, "It looked like it was snowing outside."

"What's burning?" He paused to swipe at the sweat again. By the time he was looking her in the face there were already new streaks of sweat running down his face. "I mean, if there's ash that means something's burning, right?"

Before Sakura could think of a response, there was the papery rustle of hospital sheets followed by a warbling cough. Forgetting any attempt at a reply, she turned her attention to the shuddering bundle in Naruto's arms. Somewhere between Sasuke's room and the hospital door the sheets had slipped and bunched until all that was visible of Sasuke were his dangling bare feet. Sakura shuddered. The indistinct form of his body under the clean, white sheet reminded her of a shroud.

She reached forward, wanting to pull the sheet away from his face. Her fingers were brushing against the scratchy fabric when there was another cough, stronger and punctuated with a rasp of phlegm. She yanked her hand back and there was a screeching suck of air followed by another thick cough, and another until the boy's form was thrashing in Naruto's arms.

Naruto took a tottering step back against the unexpected jolt and then lowered himself into a crouch. With a type of gentleness that Sakura had never seen in him before, Naruto transferred Sasuke to a sitting position on the ground to support the other boy's heaving back against his knees.

Sakura felt as though she was watching the scene from far away; watching Naruto's lips move but not hearing what was coming out of them as he spoke to Sasuke, yelling at him to "Try to take another breath—come on…breathe!" She couldn't hear Sasuke's sharp coughing; she could only see his form bucking convulsively.

It was the sheet—_shroud—_that brought her back, still hitched up over his face. She took one step forward, two, and knelt next to Naruto. She didn't want to look at Naruto's face; didn't want him to ask her if she was all right because they both knew that the answer was _no; nothing is all right. _Even so, as she reached forward to pull the sweat-sticky sheet away from Sasuke's face, her eyes wandered up to his because the thought of seeing Sasuke's fever-swollen, purple-blotched face again was even more painful. The pained expression in Naruto's blue eyes was so close to the dull ache she felt in her chest that it was as though she was looking into a mirror. She knew that he must be thinking the same thing she was—_How could Sasuke have gotten this bad this fast?_

Naruto was half-shouting to be heard above the rattling sound of Sasuke's coughing. "Sakura, what is this? What should we do?"

Sakura shook her head. "I don't know, Naruto. He's so sick…maybe we made a mistake—"

"No! We can't leave him here—no way!" He managed a tight smile before adding, "You're a med-nin now…you can keep him safe until we get to the Sand village…I know you can!"

A hopeless laugh bubbled up in the back of Sakura's throat. She swallowed it back and her voice came out a hoarse croak: "Naruto, I only trained with Tsunade for a month. I'd bet that any average jounin knows more than I do."

"But that's something, isn't it?"

"He'll die before we make it to the Sand village. He needs a hospital; not—"

"_Sakura," _Naruto hissed. His voice had dropped down to a whisper, but the sharp edge of fear was enough to prompt Sakura to go silent. Barely audible against Sasuke's continued coughs, he mouthed, "Somebody's outside."

Sakura felt a cold bead of sweat trickle between her shoulder blades. The pound of running footsteps was muted through the door, but nevertheless unmistakable. From his place on the floor, Sasuke continued to cough, gagging against the unrelenting strain. It was an explosive, barking sound that echoed off the hospital walls. As she watched the dark-haired boy's continued heaving, a startling realization dawned on her: _If we can hear whoever's out there, they can hear us, too._

Slowly, she thumbed open her weapons pouch. Hands slick with sweat, heart pounding in her throat, she pulled out a kunai.

Naruto's eyes traveled from the weapon in her hand up to her eyes. "What are you doing?"

She leaned as close to his ear as she could and whispered back, "What do you think I'm doing?" Naruto opened his mouth to protest. Already, he was moving to set Sasuke down so he could reach his own weapon pouch. She cut him off before he could say a word: "You have to stay safe because Sasuke's too heavy for me to carry by myself. If something happens to me, you make sure he makes it to the Sand village in one piece."

Naruto was saying something, trying to protest, but she didn't hear him. Her blood was pounding in her temples, adrenaline sparking, nerves leaving a sour taste in the back of her throat. Kunai clutched in her white-knuckled hand, she barreled down the hall and shoulder-rammed the door with all her strength. The door flew open and hit something heavy. There was a yelp and the sound of footsteps scuffling back and then the door snapped open. Sakura pounced towards the sound with her kunai raised. Every organ in her body felt compressed, pushed to a point far beyond terror. For the first time in her life, she felt ready to kill.

And then a voice was shouting, "Sakura, wait! It's me!" and her fingers were going slack around the weapon and it was clanging down to the ground and she was dropping to the ground after it in boneless relief sobbing, "Lee?"

His hair was peppered gray with the falling ash and he looked bedraggled, beaten, and exhausted, but there was no mistaking the older boy in his trademark green spandex. Sakura noticed a livid bruise forming on his cheekbone and exclaimed, "I hurt you! Why didn't you let us know it was you?"

"You're stronger than you look," he remarked, kneeling on the ground beside her. He offered a hand to help her to her feet before adding, "Which is yet another reason for me to love you for life!"

Sakura took his hand and did her best to muster an annoyed glare to show him that she was in no mood for his usual antics as he helped her to her feet. He dropped his gaze down to the knees of his spandex, smudged black from the fine dusting of ash on the ground. "I thought I heard your voice, but I did not know if it was you behind that door. I'm sorry for scaring—"

There was a resounding thud against the hospital door that cut Lee's words short and then the door flew open and Naruto burst outside with a cry of "Bushy brow!"

"Ah, Naruto! What were you doing hiding in there while Sakura—" Lee trailed off when he set eyes on the tangle of sheets in Naruto's arms. "What's happened to Sasuke?"

"He's really sick," Sakura explained.

"And we're not leaving him here!" Naruto shouted. He crouched into a defensive stance and glared at Lee as though daring the other boy to challenge his words.

Sakura did her best to look apologetic before turning her attention to Naruto. "No; we're not leaving him here," she quietly agreed. "He's going with us."

Her words had the desired effect: Naruto gave a tight, percussive nod, but his posture eased into a more natural stance while Lee repeated, "Going? Going where? Konoha is under attack—we must stand and fight! The lotus will bloom tonight!"

"It's for a mission—Tsunade told us to get to the Sand village and bring back reinforcements." Sakura could sense the older boy searching for a reply, but she didn't need to hear his response to know what he was about to say. The excitement that comes with the anticipation of battle was so strong she could smell it pouring off him in a cocktail of adrenaline-sour sweat. She didn't want to kill that enthusiasm. _This is part of your mission, _she reminded herself. Closing her eyes with a sigh, she said, "You're coming with us."

Lee started back as step as though she'd punched him in the chest. "There—there must be a mistake," he sputtered. "Konoha needs us—the lotus!"

"That's what I tried to tell that old granny," Naruto grumbled. He kicked at the ground, sending up a swirling cloud of ash around his legs.

"Tsunade's orders were to gather up as many genin as we could," Sakura answered. "You have to come with us. I'm sorry."

The excited flush drained from Lee's cheeks as he lowered his gaze to the ground. "I understand. It's just…." He trailed off with a sigh and looked down to the ground. "Do you know where this ash is coming from?"

Naruto and Sakura exchanged a glance before Naruto said, "No…do you?"

A tremor ran across Lee's face; a momentary glimpse of fearful grief that contorted the boy's features into a strange expression. He swallowed convulsively and motioned to the two of them to look behind them.

In the air above the roof of the hospital Sakura could see a ball of flame that painted the night sky red. _Just like this morning, _she thought, remembering the blood-red morning sun that seemed to mark the beginning of where everything in her life had begun to devolve into a senseless mess. _Except this is no sun. It's—_

"Oh," she whispered as the fire ball sank out of sight behind the roof of the hospital. There was a faraway sound of wood splintering; a roar of fire and then a cloud of sparks zigzagged into the sky like a swarm of fireflies. Naruto let out an anguished cry and Sakura felt her heart twist for him. The symbol of his lifelong dream, the driving passion of his life, had just been destroyed before his eyes: the Hokage tower.

Lee's voice seemed to come to her through a wall of foam: "If we are going to leave Konoha tonight, we must get to the main gate. Everything else will be locked at this hour. If take the side roads, we should be able to—"

Sakura tried to focus on what the older boy was saying, but the world had taken on a faraway, surreal quality. _The Hokage tower—Konoha's focal point; its heart was gone. _It seemed impossible. _But where its walls had always risen up into the sky, there was nothing except a dark emptiness. _When she finally spoke again she felt detached from her own voice, as though the words were from some meaningless babble language. "Shikamaru, Neji, and Hinata," she croaked. "Tsunade told us to find them."

She watched Lee's eyes light up, heard his voice and took his excited tone to mean that he had seen the people they were looking for, but the words themselves seemed meaningless. He started down the alley, towards the main road and she followed without even considering where he might be leading them. She stole a glance over her shoulder to look at Naruto and wished she hadn't. He appeared hunched in on himself and his eyes were so empty Sakura wondered whether he was cognizant of anything at all.

_He can't take much more of this, _she thought. _First Sasuke, and now the Hokage Tower…. I don't know if __**I **__can handle much more of—_"Oh," she whispered as Lee came to an abrupt stop in front of her. She had to shuffle her feet to avoid crashing into him from behind and was about to demand why he had stopped so suddenly when she looked past him and saw for herself.

It looked as though the entire population of Konoha had squeezed itself into the stretch of road beyond the hospital. There were faces she recognized as shinobi and people she recognized as civilians and countless numbers that she didn't recognize all jammed together into a tight-packed crowd that formed a wall from one side of the wide road to the other. Sakura could see swatches of blood on the ground and weapons were strewn all over; here an abandoned kunai, there a forgotten shuriken. In spite of this, the crowd was silent and motionless. Every set of eyes was focused on a large, rickety platform that had been erected in the middle of the street and Sakura could see a man pacing back and forth, shouting down at the crowd.

"This death will signify the beginning of a new time," the man shouted. "This blood will be the first drops to cleanse this city and initiate it into the new age. With the death of this beauty, a new beauty will form!"

The man motioned towards a pole in the center of the platform and Sakura felt her heart go cold in her chest. With her blue eyes gaping wide and all the color drained from her face, Ino was bound against the foot of the pole. Beside her stood a man with a kunai, and as Sakura watched the man brought the weapon up against Ino's throat. Ino shrank away from the blade, pressing herself up against the pole behind her back and the man laughed and caressed her cheek with the flat of the blade.

The shouting man held up a hand as though asking for silence before saying, "But first, an announcement. It seems our venerable leader has fully opened the way for revolution." A leering smile spread across his face. "Your Hokage is dead."

A ripple shuddered through the crowd. Everybody crowded into the street swayed forward and then back like a dragon drawing in a breath. Sakura knew that something terrible was about to happen and braced herself for the onslaught of carnage that was sure to come—but everything remained silent. Nobody spoke. Nobody moved.

And then a pained, outraged scream splintered through the night air from behind her. It was a raw, furious roar that sent a chill down her back, but even before the sound began to die off she was whirling around to face its source.

_No, Naruto, _she thought. _Don't—not here! _She tried to force the words through her lips but Naruto's face was so twisted with fury it was almost unrecognizable. Everything seemed more angular, darker. There was something in his eyes—a soulless fury that she had never seen there before—that killed the cautionary words in her throat.

With no warning, he thrust Sasuke into her arms. She stumbled against the unexpected weight and scrambled to keep the sick boy from falling to the ground. Before she could think of anything to say or do, Naruto pushed past her and, with another unearthly scream, disappeared into the crowd.

* * *

It was the scream that saved her. The animal yowl that tore through the air was so sudden and so full of desperate bloodlust that the man with the kunai slipped and the thrust that was meant to slit open her throat scraped across her jaw line instead. Ino felt a gush of hot blood ooze down her neck to stain the collar of her shirt, sticking it against her shoulder. There was no pain—not yet. For the moment, all that existed was the bewildering realization that she was still alive when by all calculations she should have been dead.

The man beside her swore under his breath and dug his fingers into her hair. With a painful jerk, he forced her chin up to expose the full length of her neck. A second dribble of blood oozed from the wound along her jaw, tracing down her neck like a slick of sweat. She saw the man readying for a second strike and struggled to twist out of his grasp. It was a wasted effort; his thick fingers were dug deep into her hair, gripping tight near the roots.

As the final remnants of the scream died away, a roar swelled through the crowd. The man was raising the kunai up to strike at her in a wide, sweeping arc. Ino didn't take her eyes off the weapon in the man's hand—the angle of his arm was enough to tell her that he intended to slit her from chin to navel—but even so, she saw a surge of movement from the street below.

It was impossible to tell whether the sudden press forward had started with the back of the crowd or with its front. The people were so tightly packed together that it didn't matter. There was no resisting the forward rush as it closed towards the platform. Ino saw a man trip and disappear under the crush of bodies as the wave pressed on.

Unable to see the descending chaos with his back to the crowd, the man in front of her twisted his face into a leer of dirty triumph. His arm whipped forward, beginning his strike—and the platform gave a shudder that sent him stumbling against her. The strike went wild, slashing through air.

The kunai slipped out of the man's hand as he struggled to right himself, but the platform gave another heave that slammed his body against hers. Ino grunted as the man's weight crushed her up against the pole. She could feel his hair plastered against her neck with her own blood.

Another jolt, this one accompanied by the sound of splintering wood and the entire platform swayed, dumping the man to the ground at Ino's feet. The ground began to tilt forward and the man rolled helplessly towards the edge of the platform. Ino felt the ropes dig into her as the platform's new angle forced her to hang against them. And then, with a gut-wrenching lurch and a protesting screech of snapping wood, the platform collapsed.

Ino didn't have time to scream before she hit the ground. There was a blur of motion, a flash of the roiling crowd (_I see pink hair—Sakura, _she thought, ridiculously), and then an impact that knocked the air out of her lungs and jarred through every nerve in her body. It jangled through her torso, down her legs, up her neck and snapped through her head and there was a moment of devouring blackness.

Her head cleared to a vaguely familiar voice saying, "—lucky to be alive. If you would have landed with that pole on top of you, you would have died."

She strained to remember why she recognized the voice. _It's not Shikamaru, _she thought. _It's not Chouji, it's not Asuma, it couldn't be daddy…. _She shivered, the memory of her father's mangled hand half-buried under wilting flower petals driving a spear of nausea through her gut.

"I've untied you," said the voice. "Can you stand? I know you're conscious."

It was a deep voice—cool and calculating. Ino tried once again to recall where she had heard it and came up empty. _The only person that sounds like that is Sasuke, and I'd know if it was Sasuke, _she thought. With a pained groan, she blinked her eyes open. "Oh; it's you," she said.

Although Shino Aburame's face was mostly hidden by the high collar of the coat he wore, Ino got an immediate feeling that she had said something wrong. His silence seemed accusatory, even as he offered a hand to help her stand.

"I didn't mean that the way it sounded," Ino apologized as she staggered to her feet. "I was just surprised. I mean—"

The rest of what she had been going to say came out as a choked-off yelp as Shino's hand tightened around hers in a vice grip and he gave her arm a sharp yank. Ino took two stumbling steps forward before she fell to the ground, scraping the palms of her hands raw. Pain flared across the wounds and with it, anger.

"Hey!" she exclaimed. "I know I was a little rude, but I was trying to apologize, you crazy bug freak! You don't just go dumping people on the ground for…for…."

She trailed off when she noticed that Shino was lying on the ground. At first she thought that he was playing some sort of trick, but she dismissed the idea as soon as it occurred to her. In all the time they had been students together at the Academy, she had never once seen the Aburame boy smile, let alone tell a joke or pull a prank. Then she saw the kunai protruding from the left side of his chest. The weapon was buried deep, but there was very little blood—only small flower of red that blossomed out from around the grip. "Oh," she breathed. _That…would have hit me._

Punching, screaming, tearing, shouting—the sounds of the riot were all around. It was impossible to tell where the kunai had come from, whether it had been intended to harm them or if it was an attack gone astray in the chaos. Ino knew that she should move before the crush of bodies reached them and she was swept up in it. Instead, she crawled to the fallen boy's side.

"Why did you do that?" she whispered. "Why—"

"Have you ever wondered why Aburame's never die in action?"

The question caught her so off-guard she could only gape. His voice had been so cool and collected he might have been asking her directions to the nearest bookstore if not for the trickle of blood dribbling from a corner of his mouth. Somewhere in the back of her mind she was still aware that she had to go; use the cover of chaos that had broken around them to _get away now, _but her body refused to move.

"Do you know why enemy shinobiare so reluctant to kill an Aburame?"

Ino couldn't take her eyes off of his lips as they opened and closed to reveal the pinkish smears of blood on his teeth. Numbly, she shook her head. "Why did you—"

Shino smiled, an expression of serenity settling over his usually impassive features. "It's the bugs," he said. He coughed and a tremor passed over his face in an otherwise well-disguised grimace of pain. "The bugs…as soon as our chakra stops flowing they swarm."

"Why are you telling me this? I'll call Sakura…she's a med-nin now; she can help. Sakura! _Sakura!"_ Her cries were lost in the noise of battle that pressed all around.

"The bugs swarm blindly. They'll kill any non-Aburame, enemies and allies alike."

"W-what? What are you…just stop talking, OK? _Sakura! SAKURA!"_

"Anybody…." He drew in a gurgling breath and a fine mist of pinkish blood dripped from his nose to color his upper lip. "Anybody within a twenty-yard radius of a fallen Aburame dies."

"Saku…." She trailed off, shaking her head. Sakura wasn't coming. Nobody was coming because nobody cared. "Why did you save me? I hardly even _know _you! _Why?"_

An unsettling smirk appeared on his face. "Because my death can cause harm to the enemy. Yours can only cause harm to our allies." Ino shook her head. Unconsciously, her hand crept toward the kunai that was buried in his chest as though to pull it out. _But that would only make things worse…wouldn't it?_

Shino's deep voice took on a frightening reedy quality as he said, "My chakra is already waning." Ino only shook her head harder, unwilling to believe that Shino Aburame, a boy that she had gone to the Academy with; a boy who all of the girls avoided because he was "disgusting," "creepy," and "weird"; a boy she knew _absolutely nothing about _had sacrificed his life for hers. The boy's lips moved and a hoarse, choked sound escaped them. Then his voice, a low, weak warble said, "I won't be able to hold the bugs for much longer. I advise you leave now."

Ino didn't move and she had no idea how long she might have sat there with the dying boy if a tangle of battling shinobiand men wearing in the unfamiliar brown uniforms hadn't stumbled into them, nearly trampling the two of them. A hand had her by the elbow, pulling her to her feet and then out of the press of bodies, away from the danger, away from the boy who had saved her life.

"_No!" _she shrieked, struggling against the hand to get back to Shino. There had to be something—_anything—_she could do to help him. He couldn't die there—not like that. She swung her free arm in a wide arc, catching the person who belonged to the hand with a frantic punch to the jaw.

And then a familiar voice was shouting, "Ino, it's me; calm down! You're fine!"

_Shikamaru, _she realized. _I have to tell him…he'll understand…._ "Shino—he's—"

"I know," he replied, pulling her farther from the fray.

"But—"

"Ino, _come on!"_

Ino opened her mouth to protest and then closed it with a gasp when a seething mass of black insects erupted into the air around the crowd and enveloped the brawl in a black void that began to expand outwards, towards the two of them. Without another word, she turned and ran, trying to block out the grotesque buzzing of the insects as they vented their rage.

Shikamaru continued to pull her forward even after they were out of the bugs' range of attack. It occurred to her that he was speaking and that it was probably for her benefit but she couldn't listen to what he was saying because she realized then that she hadn't even thanked Shino before he'd died and that now she never would. _I couldn't say anything, _she thought. _Shinobi aren't supposed to die just like that—it's not right!_

"—have to get to the main gate—it'll be the only way out of here this late," said Shikamaru.

The words seemed to echo in her head for several seconds _(out of here—out of here—out…) _before she was able to decode their meaning. _We're leaving, _she realized. She wanted to ask so many questions _(Why are we leaving? Where are we going? What are you talking about?). _She wanted to wrench her arm out of his hands and refuse to take another step until he explained to her what was happening—_make _him explain everything—but she didn't.

Instead, she let him lead her along. On one side of the street a tangle of people fighting, all of them so spattered with blood that Ino couldn't tell who was wearing the invader's brown uniform and who wasn't. On the other side of the street a line of gutted shops with their picture windows crushed to powder on the street. Streaks of blood on the whitewashed walls—red-brown-black in the shadows. She followed Shikamaru as he skirted around the melee and the glass crunched under their feet as they ran on—

—On to another pocket of fighting. Flailing limbs jabbing into her ribs, knocking her knees together, banging into the back of her head. A rough hand snatched at her ankle, tripping her. She stumbled, caught a glance of a body on the ground, a desperate, dying face, and then Shikamaru's grip tightened on her wrist, yanking her forward, out of the swirling mess of combat. Her ankle tingled where the man had grabbed her. She looked down. There was a smear of blood across the back of her sandals where the man had touched her, and Shikamaru continued to pull her forward.

The road ahead was blocked by a group of brown-uniformed men standing in a wide circle in the middle of the street with weapons drawn. They weren't moving. Ino didn't understand why until she realized that there was somebody standing in the middle of their circle. _A shinobi, _she thought. _A strong one. Who is it?_

Ino strained to see who it was that the men had surrounded but they were standing so close together that she saw only a line of brown backs. She thought she saw a set of blue shinobi sandals through their legs—and then Shikamaru was jerking her to the side and she was stumbling after him into the deep shadows at the side of the road.

"Shikamaru, who—"

"It's Neji," he breathed.

Ino turned back to the ring of men in time to see one of them flick a handful of senbon towards the center of their circle. Through the momentary gap, she saw that Shikamaru had been correct: it was Neji Hyuuga. Even from this distance Ino could see that he'd activated his Byakkugan. She saw him adopting a stance to execute his Heavenly Spin before the man's arm came back down and blocked him from sight.

_It's a stalemate, _she realized as the senbon that the man had thrown flew out of the circle of men that had Neji surrounded. _As long as he's got the chakra for his Heavenly Spin they can't land a hit. But as long as they have him surrounded he can't focus on just one or two of them without getting a handful of senbon in the back from somewhere else._

She reached for her weapons pouch—and came up empty-handed. _Of course, _she thought. _I didn't get to it before they knocked me out—it's still in the flower shop. Now what am I going to—_

The feel of something cold and deadly against her skin wrenched her out of her thoughts with an unpleasant slap. At first she had to swallow back the instinct to cry out—she was sure that one of their enemies had managed to sneak up behind her. Then she realized that it was only Shikamaru trying to hand her a set of shuriken. She took the weapons from him and mouthed, "Thank you."

He gave a sharp nod to acknowledge her thanks and drew out a pair of kunai for himself. He gave no instructions, but Ino didn't have to ask him to know he was planning to do. She didn't even take the time to aim before she threw the shuriken. The men were standing so close together that it was impossible to miss them, and their primary goal was to distract; not kill.

Still, she couldn't restrain a furious grin when one of her shuriken sliced into a uniformed man's neck. A spatter of blood sprayed onto the man beside him before he dropped to the ground, clutching at the wound with both hands. The other shuriken and Shikamaru's kunai all landed hits, sticking into other men's legs, shoulders, backs.

There were shouts from all around the circle of men as they realized what had happened. Some of them looked around as though trying to determine where the strike had come from. Some of them pulled out of the circle and ran, ignoring their comrade's indignant shouts. A few ran into the circle towards Neji, but they were too late to stop him from breaking through a weak point in the line. With two graceful sweeps of his arms, he struck the men standing in his way with the flat of his palm. He jumped over them as they crumpled to the ground. Ino didn't know whether they were dead or whether they were injured and she didn't care. _None of them even bothered to help the guy I hit, _she thought with disgust as she followed Shikamaru away from the crowd. _What a bunch of scum._

They kept to the shadows, careful to keep Neji in view until they were completely clear of the confused mob. Once they were a safe distance away from the chaos, Shikamaru called out, "Neji!"

The Hyuuga boy came to a jerking stop before turning around to face them. "I knew you were there," he said, the lines of the Byakkugan fading from around his eyes as he spoke. "I was wondering when you would catch up."

_Hmph. Not even a thank you, _Ino thought. She was tempted to say something biting to the older boy, but before she could think of anything scathing enough, Shikamaru said, "Where's Hinata?"

"I sent her ahead with Sakura and Lee. Naruto is supposed to be helping me cover their retreat, but we got separated."

Ino thought that he looked as though he wanted to offer a more complete explanation, but a crash of shattering glass cut off anything else he might have said on the matter. She knew that it was a bad idea to look back. It was one of the first lessons that Academy students learned—_a good shinobi always keeps their mind in the here and now—_but she couldn't help glancing over her shoulder as the three of them ran on.

In the few moments that they had lingered, the riot had pushed forward. The boiling mass of fighting bodies was so dense that Ino couldn't see the street beyond. She decided that she was grateful for that small mercy. The confused jumble of splintering wood, crashing glass, and screaming was enough for her to guess that the crowd was leaving a trail of destruction and death in its wake.

_We can't let that crowd catch up to us, _she thought. She felt the man's callused fingers around her ankle again, the ghostly manifestation of remembered sensation. Remembered his face—that mind-searing image of wide-eyed terror of death. Remembered how with one minuscule shift of the crowd, he'd been swallowed up, lost. _Like murder, _she thought. _We'll die if we get ourselves stuck in that mess._

As the sharp sounds of brawl faded to a muted roar behind them, the sounds of another battle became clearer as they neared the main gate. Ino heard Naruto's abrasive voice long before they came across the gaggle of Naruto Shadow Clones—_was one of them the real Naruto?—_that were mobbing a group of men in the invader's brown uniform. She heard the whooshing sound of disappearing clones and the yelling of the remaining clones, all mixed together into a meaningless babble of gibberish screams. Then they were threading through the chaos, ducking under a hail of flying kunai and senbon, dodging a stray kick from a Shadow Clone, twisting away from the grip of an enemy's hand as the fingers raked through her hair, all to run on—

—On to the final stretch of road that led to the main gate. Ahead, Ino saw Lee fighting against a wall of men in brown uniforms while Sakura and Hinata struggled to carry an unwieldy _something _that was swaddled in a sheet. And beyond—not so far away— was Konoha's massive main gate, creaking as another group of brown-uniformed men fought to pull it closed. Ino saw them straining against the ropes, saw them take a step forward, saw the gate wobble, saw the opening shrink to half its size as the doors came closer together.

Beside her, Shikamaru cursed under his breath before shouting back to the mess of fighting Shadow Clones behind them, "Naruto, we're leaving! Now!" Then his hand was around her wrist and he was pulling her after Neji, who had already reached the edges of the fray ahead of them.

Ahead, the gates wobbled another few feet closer together and she thought, _We're not going to make it in time! _Then she saw a blue flash of chakra snap through the air as Neji swept his arms forward, hitting the man closest to him on the chest. The man dropped to the ground before he even had time to scream.

Shikamaru steered her towards the opening and the two of them jumped over the man's unmoving body. Ahead, Ino saw another flash of blue and another man fell to land face-up on the ground. His face was a frozen mask of surprise with eyes that were glazed over as they stared up at the smoky sky. Ino wondered whether he had even felt the pain.

Again and again, she saw the blue flash of chakra and again and again the men that stood in their way crumpled to the ground, all of them wearing that same expression of glazed surprise on their frozen faces. Ino knew that she should be grateful to Neji for clearing a path through the crowd, but a wave of nausea boiled in her gut as she stepped over the string of unmoving bodies. There were so many and they were so close together that she couldn't avoid stepping on them. She stumbled over dead arms, legs, and with his hand still clutched around her wrist she could feel Shikamaru struggling to avoid losing his balance. Her foot sank into something soft; something that responded with a wet gurgle. She looked down in time to see a strand of blood-tainted saliva boil from the lips of the man she'd stepped on. Her own guts roiled at the sight. The acidic taste of bile swept into her mouth and she could feel it warm in the back of her throat and she was retching but nothing came out as Shikamaru pulled her forward—

—Forward and through the line of enemies that stood between them and their only means of escape. The sudden openness was so dizzying that the only thing that kept her from stumbling over her own feet was a sharp tug on her arm from Shikamaru. She could see the gate clearly now. It was almost closed—she could see only a sliver of the world beyond the city walls through the gate's double doors.

Shikamaru was running faster than Ino had ever seen him move before; so fast she felt as though she was on the edge of falling as he pulled her along. Ahead, she could see Hinata and Sakura still carrying the sheet-swaddled bundle between them as they ran. Beyond them, a final line of brown uniformed men stood blocking the gate. Neji and Lee were sprinting to reach the line of enemies before the two girls got within their striking range but they were far behind—_Too far behind, _Ino realized. _They're not going to get there in time!_

Ino watched the men who stood in their way ready their weapons but Sakura and Hinata didn't even slow down. _Why don't they stop? _she feverishly wondered. _Don't they see?_ She opened her mouth to scream a warning, but then Naruto was bolting past Neji and Lee, overtaking the girls ahead, lunging towards the line of men in a blur of orange. He made no hand signs; he had no weapons in his hands. Instead, there was a wrathful animal howl that made her skin prickle with gooseflesh and then Naruto—stupid, loud, annoying, dead-last _Naruto—_was bearing down on the line of men with a type of fury Ino had never seen before. There were no jutsu. Instead, he was fighting like an animal—kicking, biting, clawing. Ino saw him head butt a man hard enough to draw blood.

Somehow, Sakura and Hinata had managed to thread through the confusion. Ino could see them running on the far side of the gate with Naruto following close behind as the doors continued to inch closed. By the time Neji and Lee arrived, a fresh set of men in brown uniforms was rushing in to aid the group that Naruto had left in shambles. Neji and Lee were making their first strikes when Shikamaru and Ino caught up.

"Ino…Shikamaru," Neji huffed between Gentle Fists, "When I say go…get through the gate. We'll clear…a path for you."

"Wh-what?" Ino exclaimed.

"Ready?"

"We can't just leave you both here!"

"_Ready?"_

"Shikamaru, tell them we won't—"

"GO!"

Ino wanted to scream, wanted to resist, wanted to do _something _to show them that it was horrible, that it was wrong, that it _wasn't supposed to happen this way, _but everything happened too quickly to do anything. Shikamaru ran forward, dragging her behind. There were men in brown uniforms everywhere shouting at each other, throwing kunai and senbon. A shuriken whistled through the air close enough to nick her arm band and then they were pushing through the open crack in the gate, so small now that she felt her elbows knocking against the two doors. And then they were out, onto the wide, deserted road outside that stretched far away from the village.

Ino wrenched her hand free from Shikamaru's iron grip. She felt furious tears pricking in her eyes and shrieked, "Why did you let them do that? _Why?" _He opened his mouth to reply, but she turned away from him to look back at the gate. "Neji!" she screamed. "Lee!"

As though in answer, there was a surprised shout from behind the gate and then Neji tumbled through the shrinking opening to land in a heap on the ground as the doors rumbled closed behind him. He took no notice of the two of them standing there as he rolled to his feet. Instead he whispered, "Lee…you stupid, stupid fool."

"N-Neji?"

The older boy jerked at the sound of her voice, posture going rigid as though in anticipation of a physical assault. Then he shook his head and said, "He pushed me."

"What?"

"Exactly what I said, Nara," he snapped, whirling around to give Shikamaru a poisonous glare. Shikamaru took an unsteady step back—Hyuuga eyes were always intense, even without the Byakkugan activated—but Neji's expression softened and he said, "We were fighting side by side and the gate kept closing. There were too many of them for us to both get through in time and that idiot pushed me."

"Oh," Ino said. "I'm sorry."

Neji said nothing in response and the silence stretched to an uncomfortable length before Shikamaru said, "We should get away from here before they decide to come after us. We should meet up with the others, too."

Neji fell into step beside them as they started off on the road away from Konoha. When the gates were no longer in view, he said, "Do you know the last the he said to me?" He shook his head with a disbelieving laugh. "He said 'Neji, go and fight for the springtime of youth.'" Even though his tone was collected as always, Ino was sure she detected a grief-stricken choked quality below the cool façade.

* * *

**Author's Notes: **You may have noticed that I finally bit the bullet and upped the rating on this thing to 'M.' That means from here on out, these chapters are uncut. So there we go…new chapter, new rating, new summary. Hope you enjoyed it.

Thanks to unreproachablephoenix for reviewing chapter six. It's always nice to hear a few encouraging words!


	8. The Fallen Soldier

CHAPTER EIGHT

Sakura's hands trembled as she dabbed at the beads of sweat that were trickling along the lines of Sasuke's fever-swollen face with a corner of the hospital sheet. Even through the thin hospital sheet, she could feel the heat of the fever roll over her hands. It was difficult to know without the aid of any medical equipment, but she suspected that the fever had crept even higher than it had been when she and Naruto had found him in a sweat-soaked huddle that morning. Now she could hear his teeth chattering.

She didn't know whether she was about to throw up, burst into tears, or drop dead from exhaustion. She remembered very little of anything after the battle at the gate. What she did remember hurtled through her mind in confused snatches. _Running through the forest…Naruto shouting, throwing a kunai at a brown-uniformed man…the weight of Sasuke's prone body throwing her off balance and falling, tumbling on the ground…run, run, RUN! _All she was sure of was that Ino and Neji and Shikamaru must have joined them at some point. Some time after that, when her legs felt like putty, they'd stopped and that was when it all hit her:

Lee was missing—_was he dead? She was afraid to ask because she already knew what the answer would be. _Ino was hurt—_blood all down her neck and on her shirt and in her hair and it was going to scar if somebody didn't do something about it soon. _Konoha was dead—_she'd heard the screams, even when they were miles away and there was nothing anybody could do to stop it. _And Sasuke was still gravely ill—_no hospitals, no medicine, nothing she could do to help him…._

"How's he doing?"

Sakura jumped at the sound of Naruto's voice, swallowing back a scream. She had allowed herself to drift into her own private world as she mopped at Sasuke's sweat-soaked face. "Don't sneak up on me like that," she said without turning around to face him. The words had been intended as an annoyed rebuke, but they had come out as a tired sigh.

"Sorry." Sakura shivered at the sound of his voice. He sounded as exhausted as she felt; as though he'd been scraped hollow from the inside out. "Is he any better?"

Sakura didn't want to turn around. She didn't want turn around because then she would see Hinata sitting on the ground with her knees hugged to her chest, too numb to cry. Beside Hinata, Neji would be pacing back and forth with a dazed expression on his face and Shikamaru would be leaning against a tree, trying to talk to Ino but shaking so badly it was noticeable even in the smoldering light of their tiny fire. And Ino—she would be running a finger along her jaw line, trying to assess the damage by feeling the mix of rough scar material and sticky dried blood. But most of all, she didn't want to see Naruto's face because she didn't know what she would do if his eyes looked as empty as his voice had sounded. It was much easier to focus on Sasuke's shivering form; pretend it was the only problem they had to contend with at the moment. She turned around.

Careful to avoid looking into his eyes, she said, "No…he hasn't even woken up…I don't know what to do for him—I don't know what he needs."

"Don't say that. You're a med-nin—there must be something you can do."

Sakura felt a spark of anger in her chest and snatched at it because it was so much easier to be angry than it was to be afraid. "Do you know what, Naruto? I do know what he needs," she said. She held up her hand, ticking the points off on her fingers as she went on, "He needs medicine. He needs a hospital."

Fury burning in her veins, she brought her eyes up to meet his. She recognized the pained expression there—_what about Chouji? Don't you want to see if Shizune gave him those potato chips?— _the same dull look Shikamaru had given her earlier. For an instant, she faltered, knowing that this was somehow worse than before. She wanted to stop, but everything felt so wrong and she was so tired and it all hurt so much that she couldn't stop the words from coming out: "He needs to be somewhere warm and safe and clean. He needs to _not _be lying outside on the ground in the middle of the freezing cold night. He needs a real med-nin who knows what they're doing instead of a trainee who barely even learned how to hook up an IV line—"

She could see the emptiness in Naruto's eyes hardening; his eyebrows were knit together dangerously. He was opening his mouth to speak and Sakura knew that no matter what he said, it was going to be the beginning of a nasty fight. Before he could say a word, there was a surprised squeak from behind him, followed by a jumble of shouting. Naruto wheeled around with a gasp while Sakura strained to see the other members of their ramshackle group.

Ino was crouched into a fighting stance and Shikamaru and Neji were both standing at the ready with weapons drawn. All three of them were darting glances around the campsite. Sakura could see Neji's eyes lined with the Byakkugan's veins. Naruto snaked his hand down to his weapon pouch and removed a kunai without taking his eyes off their campsite. Sakura moved to do the same when she noticed that Hinata had not moved from her place on the ground. Instead, she was reaching towards a small ball of fluff that was hobbling towards her.

"Isn't that—" A shiver ran through the group at the sound of Sakura's voice. For one tense moment, everybody seemed to lean forward, poised to attack. Then Shikamaru lowered his weapon, followed by Naruto and Neji. Ino relaxed into a more natural position and they all stood staring at the ball of fur that Hinata was cradling in her arms.

Naruto was first to break the silence. "Isn't that that Kiba guy's dog? Aki…Ama…A—"

"Akamaru," Hinata supplied, stroking her fingers across the dog's muzzle.

"Yeah; that's right!" Naruto exclaimed. Then: "He doesn't look too good…."

Hinata made a choked noise in the back of her throat. Sakura resisted the urge to hit Naruto on the back of the head and made a mental note to remind him about the importance of tact. Then she caught a look at the dog in the Hyuuga girl's arms and decided that maybe he was underestimating things.

The small Inuzuka dog's fur was stained pink with blood. He was shivering so badly that it looked as though Hinata was having trouble keeping him in her arms and the way he held one of his hind legs at an awkward angle close to his body suggested that it was badly injured.

Shikamaru frowned. "If that's Kiba's dog, where's Kiba?"

At the mention of Kiba's name, Akamaru gave a yip and wriggled against Hinata's hold until she set him back on the ground. Favoring his damaged hind leg, he limped to the edge of their campsite then looked back at their group with a sharp bark.

Even without an Inuzuka to translate, the meaning was clear enough. Without a word, Hinata stood and followed the small dog as it led her away from the campsite. Neji, Shikamaru, and Naruto exchanged a look of panic before hurrying to follow. They were almost beyond the light of the campfire when Naruto said, "Sakura, aren't you coming?"

She shook her head. "Some of us should stay with Sasuke."

In the shadows at the edge of the campsite, Shikamaru came to a halt. "It would be better if you came, Sakura."

"But—"

"Naruto and Ino can stay with Sasuke."

Sakura felt her guts clench. _If Akamaru's that beat up, Kiba's going to be in bad shape, too…I bet that's what you're thinking, isn't it, Shikamaru?_ "Yeah…I guess you're right."

"But I want to—"

"Just do it, Naruto," Sakura sighed. "Please."

Naruto puckered his lips into the beginning of a pout but said, "Yeah; OK. Sure."

"If we're not back in fifteen minutes, assume we ran into trouble," Shikamaru drawled from the shadows. "Put out the fire and change your position. Don't try to be heroes. Got it?"

"Yeah, yeah; I've got it," Naruto muttered back.

"Hurry up and go or you'll lose them," Ino added as she knelt in Sakura's place at Sasuke's side.

"All right; let's go, Sakura."

Sakura didn't want to leave the comforting glow of the campfire. She didn't want to let Sasuke _(Is he dying? Will he still be alive in the morning?) _out of her sight. She didn't want to think about what they would find in the dark forest. She wanted to scream, _"I'm not a real med-nin! I can't make any difference!"_ She followed Shikamaru.

Hinata and Neji were already so far ahead that it was difficult to make out their shadowy forms in the dark. Sakura tried to occupy herself with keeping the two of them in sight and avoiding any treacherous bumps or tree roots, but all she could think of were the few emergency operations she had witnessed under Tsunade's tutelage. _There was that man with the broken leg with the bone sticking out…and the one who kept coughing up blood…and the ANBU agent who got stuck in that genjutsu and couldn't stop screaming…. _

She could still remember his frantic screams as they dwindled down to throat-torn croaks that she could feel in her own throat. They were choked barks; suffocating…couldn't breathe—_Stop it, _she thought. She tried to think of something—_anything—_else, but the experiences kept running through her head with every grisly detail intact. _The pop of bone snapping back into place…the frothy pink color of blood-flecked phlegm trickling over the chin…the wet sound of blood coagulating and tissues mending, much faster than they were ever meant to do…screaming…panic—_

Hinata's alarmed shriek snapped her back to reality. _I don't want to do this; why am I doing this, _she thought as her legs continued to carry her forward, closer and closer to whatever had made Hinata scream. _Just go back to the campsite. Go back, go back, go back…. _She stopped beside the Hyuuga girl, who was standing with both hands over her mouth because her face had gone a sickly shade of gray. She heard a quiet bark from Akamaru. _Don't look, don't look…. _Sakura took a deep breath and looked down.

The first thing she saw was the blood. It was caked in his hair, pooled on the ground; his clothes were pasted against his body with it—everywhere she looked was the brown-black color of blood in the dark. There was so much of it she didn't know how it could have come from him alone. _He's dead; he must be dead, _she thought, but even as the thought entered her head she saw his shoulders give a ragged rise and fall—an up-down convulsion that was too hurried and too shallow.

Somebody was saying, "Kiba? Can you hear me?" and Sakura wondered who it was before she realized that the voice was her own. She couldn't feel her lips moving or her vocal chords working, but her voice kept repeating, "Kiba? Can you hear me?"

There was a tired groan, a long pause, and then: "Wh-whaaa? Who?"

Sakura felt her chest go tight. _He's still conscious—how is he still conscious? He shouldn't be conscious…he shouldn't be alive! This is impossible; it can't be real. All of this is just a horrible dream. If I stop believing it I'll wake up soon and it'll all go away and I'll be safe and warm in my bed and I can laugh because—_

"S-Sakura," whispered Hinata. "Do you think…I mean, can you help him?"

_Don't answer! It's a dream; it'll go away! _Sakura closed her eyes, wanting to lose herself in the idea. If she tried hard enough, she could almost feel the soft, comforting sheets of her bed cocooned around her body, but….

But it was so cold and the cold was too real to be a dream. And everybody was waiting for her to answer. And Kiba was still lying on the ground and she couldn't waste any more time. "Somebody start a fire so I can see what I'm doing," she said. "And help me get his shirt off."

Careful to avoid the blood on the ground, she knelt beside Kiba's prone form. From this close, she could hear his short, hitched breaths that were coming almost one on top of the other. The hem of his shirt clung against his body with half-dried blood. Sakura peeled it free with a sense of revulsion as the cold, sticky blood stained her fingers. Then another pair of hands—Shikamaru's—was there, helping her inch the saturated fabric up the length of the Inuzuka boy's back.

Even without the light of a fire, Sakura could see the slash that ran down his back well enough to know that it was deep. _I'll deal with that later, _she thought. _There's too much blood for that to be the only wound—there's got to be something else._

"Help me turn him over," she whispered, hitching her arms around Kiba's shoulder.

Shikamaru nodded, keeping his mouth tightly closed. Sakura wondered whether he was about to be sick, but then he was reaching forward with steady hands. They lifted the semi-conscious boy's torso together, trying to avoid any twisting motions that might irritate the wound on his back and a spurt of fresh blood gushed from his exposed abdomen.

"Damn!" Shikamaru exclaimed, letting his grip on the injured boy go slack in his surprise. Kiba slumped back to the ground with an agonized groan and Hinata gave a short, sharp scream before pressing both hands over her mouth. Her eyes bulged wide as she took a convulsive step away from the grisly scene.

Neji's voice drifted to them from beside the small campfire: "What happened? What's going on?"

_That looked like a gut wound, _Sakura thought. She glanced down to Kiba, who was shaking on the ground where he had fallen, breathing in short, pained gasps. _This is bad…really, really bad. But first things first…. _"Neji, take Hinata back to our campsite. Please."

Neji darted a glance to his cousin before saying, "Yeah…all right. Good idea." Approaching the trembling girl carefully, he said, "Come on, Hinata, let's go."

Hinata said nothing in response, not even moving her hands away from her mouth, but she allowed him to lead her away from the light of the new campfire, back the way they had come. Sakura breathed an internal sigh of relief as they went. _I don't think she could take much more and I have a feeling that this is going to get worse before it gets better, _she thought. Aloud, she said, "Come on, Shikamaru, help me get him turned over."

As Shikamaru adjusted his grip on Kiba's shoulder, Sakura realized that the Inuzuka boy was attempting to speak. The words were muffled from his position on the ground, and so slurred it was difficult to tell where one ended and the other began. She leaned closer to the prone boy and managed to decipher what it was he was trying to say: "Am I going to die?"

"No; no you're not going to…to die," she whispered. She hoped the words didn't sound as false to him as they did to her. "We're going to help you. OK, Shikamaru, on three. One…two…three!"

Again, they lifted the boy's torso up off the ground. A fresh ooze of blood bubbled from the abdominal wound, and Sakura heard Shikamaru curse under his breath at the sight of it, but his grip stayed strong. Working together, they maneuvered Kiba onto his back. Sakura sucked a hissing gasp through her teeth at the sight of the wound. There was a long slash that ran from his left hip, below his belly button, and curved up to stop just short of the lower edge of his ribs. Although it wasn't a gaping wound as she had feared, Sakura guessed that this was where most of the blood she had seen was coming from. Sakura didn't know how deep the wound was, but the way he was breathing—shallow, without allowing his abdominal muscles to move—told her that it was deep enough to be serious.

"Am…a-am I g-going to die?" Kiba repeated. "I'm going to…going to d-die…."

Sakura ignored him, concentrating instead on directing her chakra into her right hand. She could feel it gathering, burning in the tips of her fingers until there was so much it felt as though her hand was swelling. Holding her hand over the wound, she forced more chakra into her hand, until she felt it stretching against the pores in her skin. Then, with a grunt, she pushed it out through her pores, directing it into the wound, into the torn muscle tissue and ruptured blood vessels.

Fat beads of sweat popped out on her forehead. She felt dizzy, almost giddy with exertion. Her hand was on fire and a series of wrenching cramps were shivering down her right arm. Kiba's body was jerking against her hand and Sakura knew that her raw, unrefined chakra must have been burning him the same way it was burning her but there was nothing she could do to stop it. She heard his screaming die to exhausted groans and then fade to nothing at all. From far, far away, Shikamaru's voice said, "He fainted." But through it all, she heard the wet sound of tissues repairing, blood forming scar tissue, _healing._

Finally, when the world was fading to colorless gray, she tore her hand away from the wound. With nowhere else to go, her chakra snapped through her body, burning up her arm, across her chest, in her head. She slumped forward on the edge of consciousness and then she sucked in a long, gasping breath and the world came back into focus. Her body felt hot and she was soaking in sweat and all she wanted was to fall into a long, deep sleep.

Then Shikamaru said, "Sakura…look. It—it worked."

Sakura jerked herself back to full consciousness and brought her attention to the wound. She was relieved to see that Shikamaru had been right—to a certain extent. The wound had stopped bleeding and the beginnings of scar tissue had begun to form, but it was a deep, wet pink color. _It only halfway worked, _she thought. _It'll open again if we're not careful. And he still has the other wound on his back._

That final thought brought frustrated tears to her eyes. Even the idea of performing a second medical jutsu was enough to make her dizzy. _I can't afford to use any more chakra right now, _she thought as she watched Shikamaru struggle to turn the unconscious boy so he lay on his stomach again. As the wound on his back came into view again, she thought, _Kiba can't afford to wait. He'll die for sure if he loses any more blood. Maybe I can try something else…._

She reached into her weapons pouch and withdrew a kunai. Shikamaru raised his eyebrows but said nothing, for which she was grateful. Without saying a word, she held a kunai out over the fire that Neji had built.

Shikamaru's eyes went wide. "Are you planning to—to…." He trailed off with a grimace.

"Yes. Yes, I am and if you can't handle it you go stand over there until I'm done because I'm already scared enough for both of us. OK?"

He nodded with a sickened expression on his face but stayed seated on the ground beside the Inuzuka boy. Secretly, Sakura was glad he'd chosen to stay. _I don't know if I can do this by myself, _she thought as she removed the kunai from the heat of the fire. _I don't know if I could stand it._

Moving quickly, she knelt beside Kiba's unconscious form. She could feel the heat rolling off the metal. She whispered a silent apology to Kiba for what she was about to do and then brought the flat edge of the kunai against the wound.

There was no sound. There should have been sound—Kiba should be screaming, she should hear the hiss of blood as it sizzled against the hot metal, a crackling noise as the flesh burned. There was nothing. Sakura didn't know why it seemed so wrong to her, but the silence was worse than any sound she could have imagined. She pulled the kunai away. The flesh on either side of the wound was a burnt reddish color—_It's going to leave a scar, _Sakura thought, giddily, stupidly—but the wound itself had turned dark and fibrous in the place where the kunai had touched it. There was a sudden, sweet-strong smell of burning flesh. The stench of it settled in her sinuses until she could almost taste it. A gag built in the back of her throat but she forced it back and pressed the kunai to the next section of the wound.

Sakura didn't remember how many times she pressed the kunai against the wound or how long it was before it was completely closed. She remembered reheating the metal once—twice?—and she remembered burning the tips of the fingers on her left hand. She remembered the sound of Shikamaru retching. She remembered seeing the irregular line of fibrous scar tissue ringed with burnt flesh when she was finally done. And then she didn't remember anything else at all.

* * *

It was bright…why was it so bright? It wasn't time to wake up yet—he was too tired for it to be time to get up. But then why was it so bright? He wanted to ignore the light, roll over, and go back to sleep, but when he attempted to move a burning stab of pain ripped through his body.

"Ugh," he groaned, gasping against the unexpected onslaught. _What happened to me? _He miserably thought as the pain dulled back to a throbbing ache. "Owwww…."

A voice beside him shouted, "Hey—hey, Sakura! I think he's waking up!"

_That sounded like Naruto…. And Sakura…Haruno? What…? _There was an excited bark and then a cold, wet nose was snuffling against his cheek. "Aka…maru?"

Slowly, he opened his eyes. And then everything came rushing back. _Spilled blood, slaughter, cracking ribs, cold anger, "…she was a good screw…", PAIN!_ Kiba felt his stomach roil as the grisly scenes played over in his head but everything felt so sore he didn't think he could have thrown up even if he'd wanted to.

"How are you feeling?"

Kiba turned to look at Sakura, who had knelt on the ground beside him. She looked even more tired than he felt. "I've been better." He tried to sit up and bolt of pain wrenched down his back, causing him to slide back to the ground with a yelp.

"No sudden moves," Sakura scolded. "Your wounds aren't completely healed yet and you'll open them up if you do that again."

Gingerly, he maneuvered into a sitting position. His back and abdominal muscles spasmed against the movement but there was none of the tearing pain he'd experienced the first time. _How am I still alive? _He wondered. _And why are we still way the hell out here?_

He was about to ask all the questions that were circulating in his brain when a set of arms locked around his torso, enclosing him in a tight hug. He wanted to raise his arms to return the hug but the sudden pressure against the wound on his back prompted him to gasp, "Hinata…can't breathe…."

His teammate released him and whispered, "S-sorry, Kiba…I thought…we thought you were going to die…."

"Yeah…for a while there I thought so, too. Who healed me?"

"I did," Sakura briskly replied.

"Oh. Thanks. I didn't know you could do that."

She smiled. "To tell you the truth, neither did I."

"Oh…wow. So, uh…not to sound ungrateful or anything, but can anybody explain what all of you are doing all the way out here?"

"We could ask you to do the same." Neji cut in. Kiba was taken aback by the harsh quality in the Hyuuga boy's voice. _Hmph. Who went and shoved a stick up his ass? _Neji shot him a glare that gave him the uncomfortable feeling that the older boy was somehow able to read his thoughts before adding, "How did you get out? Were you trying to run away? How did you manage it by yourself?"

Kiba frowned. "I don't know what you're talking about. What do you mean 'get out?' And I don't run away from things." _Asshole._

Neji clenched his hand into a fist. "Some people made real sacrifices. Some people gave up their lives so we could be here and not back there. So how did you get out here by yourself?"

Kiba wanted to stand up. He didn't like having to look up to see the older boy's face; it made him feel pathetic. He started to move as though to get to his feet but the way his legs juddered against the weight of his body made him feel even more pathetic and he settled with returning Neji's glare with one of his own as he said, "You know what? I don't know what bug went and crawled up your rear but you don't have to take it out on me, OK? And—"

He trailed off when a stench that made him want to gag wafted to his nose. It was an oily-salty smell mixed with the acidic stink of sick. For the first time, he noticed Ino Yamanaka hovering over a sheet-swaddled figure with her back to the rest of the group. The reek of the illness was so strong he could barely detect the natural scent of the body it was coming from. It was more than enough to tell him that Sasuke Uchiha was seriously ill. "Why isn't Sasuke in the hospital?"

Whatever reaction Kiba had expected to get, he hadn't been prepared for the way Neji balled his fists even tighter or the way Sakura and Naruto both seemed to sink in on themselves or the way that Hinata turned her face away with a hitched gasp. It seemed that nobody was going to offer an explanation at all until Shikamaru said, "At this point that's not an option."

"What do you mean 'not an option?' He's really sick—he could die."

Naruto made a choked sound in the back of his throat and Sakura seemed to sink even further into herself at the sound of the word 'die.' Shikamaru glanced at each of them, moving only his eyes before directing his attention back to Kiba. "Konoha's under attack."

Kiba felt his mouth gop open. He wanted to say something, but no words would come out. All he could think was, _Those men—the ones who killed mom and Hana…was it them?_ It occurred to him that Shikamaru was still talking and that he needed to listen. With a great effort, he pushed his racing thoughts to the back of his head to hear the other boy saying, "Tsunade has sent us on a mission to go to the Sand village and bring back reinforcements. We were supposed to find as many genin as possible to come with us. This was the best we could do."

"What happened to the others?" Kiba didn't know why he asked the question. He hadn't wanted to, but somehow the words had just spilled from his mouth. The shudder that passed through the group was clear enough. It was difficult to tell with her back to him, but Kiba thought that Ino had started to cry.

The silence stretched for several miserable seconds before Shikamaru said, "Now that you know the situation, can you explain how you got out here last night?"

"Yeah…yes; of course…." He trailed off and a realization stabbed through his brain: _Shino's not here…. _His throat suddenly felt tight and raw. _You crazy bug man, _he thought. _You'd better have gone down fighting._

"Kiba?"

The sound of Hinata's whispered voice caught him by surprise. He jumped, causing the wound on his back to flare before saying, "There were men in brown uniforms. They came to our house, killed mom and Hana, tried to kill me, too…." A lump hitched in his throat. He swallowed it back. "When I woke up, I was underneath mom and Hana and all of the dead nin-dogs. I think…I think those guys must have dumped me out here with them thinking I was dead."

He swallowed convulsively before whispering, "The smell…." He trailed off with a shake of his head. Putting the memory of the smell of blood-drenched rot burning in his sinuses into words was too much. His eyes were dry but his nose felt like it was streaming. _I'm not going to cry; not in front of them, _he thought.

To buy himself time to force back his tears, he reached into his pocket—and gasped when he found it was empty. _I lost it, _he thought. _How could I have lost it—it was there last night! I know I put it in there! I can't believe this! _Willing his voice to stay level, he asked, "Did anybody see a ring near me last night?"

Sakura and Shikamaru exchanged a look of mutual inquiry before looking to Neji, who raised his eyebrows and shook his head. "Sorry, Kiba," Sakura said. "I don't think—"

"Are you talking about this?" Ino queried, turning away from Sasuke's unmoving form. In her hand was a silver ring with a stylized fang insignia on the seal.

Kiba started with surprise, but not because the ring in her hand was the correct one. There was an angry red scar on her face that stretched from below Ino's left ear to her chin. He realized that he was staring, but the mark was so vivid against her perfect, cream-colored skin he couldn't take his eyes away from it.

She brought her free hand up to trace her fingers along the jagged line and scowled. "Is this the ring or isn't it?"

"Yeah…." He trailed off, still unable to look away from the scar on her face. "How did—"

"Akamaru went and got it during my watch last night. Here." She flung it across the camp to him and then turned back to Sasuke, hiding the scar from view again.

"Good boy, Akamaru," he mumbled, absently scratching the nin-dog behind the ears as he stared at the ring in his hand. _I was always jealous of Hana because mom was going to give her the clan ring, _he thought._ Now I wish she'd have gotten it instead of me after all…._

There was another long silence and Kiba got a distinct feeling that he had broken some unspoken taboo that had been set by the rest of the group. _I wasn't trying to be an ass, _he indignantly thought. _How was I supposed to know? It's not like I was expecting to see that scar—I was just surprised._

Shikamaru's voice broke through his internal ranting: "Sakura, can he walk yet?"

"I don't know…probably. Kiba, can you walk?"

_No; I feel like I've gone through a meat grinder. _"Yes."

Shikamaru nodded. "In that case, we should get going."

"Going? Where are we going?" Kiba grunted as Hinata helped him to struggle to his feet.

"Sand village," Naruto answered. "Everything will be all right once we get there."

Kiba wanted to believe the other boy's words, but the hollow expression in the blonde's eyes made him wonder if even Naruto—stupid, obnoxious, always overly-optimistic _Naruto_—believed them. And somehow, that was what scared him most of all.

* * *

**Author's Notes: **Surprise! Kiba's lives! Things have been so doom-and-gloom for these poor kids that something good was bound to happen eventually. Even so, they had better keep in mind that the desert can be a very dangerous place (and that I am a very evil author. Mwahaha).

Thanks to Falconeyes and unreproachablephoenix for reviewing! You guys rule!


	9. Desert Blitz

CHAPTER NINE

Yellow. Everything was yellow. The sand, the sun, the stained and scattered bones of some unfortunate creature that had died in this barren wasteland—it was all a flesh curdling blaze of yellow.

Shikamaru had always hated the color yellow. It was too smiley. It was the color of vomit. It was the color of the yolks in the center of the boiled eggs that his mother used to fix every Sunday morning even though she knew he hated that food. Now he had a new reason to add to his ever-growing list of Why the Color Yellow is the Most Annoying Color in the World: it was the only color visible in the desert besides the equally unpleasant eye-searing blue of the sky.

He wiped at the smear of sweat that was creeping into his eyes and tried to ignore the headache that was searing through his temples. It was so unbelievably _hot _that all he wanted to do was curl up and take a nap. His hair and clothes were saturated with sweat; he could feel it slicking down his body like oil. Every bit of exposed skin on his arms and legs was prickling with sunburn.

He was grateful that he'd had his chuunin vest to use as a makeshift cover for his head so his face was at least partially spared from the scorching sun, even though it made the sweat pour down the back of his neck and looked "absolutely ridiculous" as Naruto, Kiba, Ino, and Sakura had all been kind enough to point out when they had first reached the edge of the desert.

In spite of their teammate's taunting words, it hadn't been long before Hinata had stripped off her coat to follow his example. After several hours of trudging across the bleak desert landscape and acquiring a lovely set of matching sunburns on their faces, Naruto and Kiba had swallowed their pride and done the same. Shikamaru felt sorry for Ino, Neji, and Sakura. Having no handy vest or jacket to spare, they had no choice but to endure the heat of the sun as their faces burned redder and redder.

_We should have waited until sunset before trying to cross the desert, _he thought, watching Neji brush a hand through the sweat-soaked hair that was clinging to the back of his neck. _I thought it would get cooler as the sun started to go down._

He shook his head. Even in the slanting rays of the late afternoon sun the air still felt as heavy as it had when they had first started out. Nobody—not even Naruto—had said anything for hours. Their pace had slowed to a crawl. Shikamaru didn't know how Naruto had the strength to maintain the two shadow clones that were carrying Sasuke between them and he didn't have the energy to care. All he could think was, _If it's this hot now we're going to be in real trouble if we don't make it to the Sand village before noon tomorrow. There isn't much in the way of cover out here and—_

Kiba's voice cut through his train of thought, tired but tinged with an unmistakable spark of irritation: "Damn it, Naruto, watch where you're going!"

"Hey; it's not my fault you decided to come grinding to a dead stop right in front of me," Naruto answered, his voice laced with the same tired combativeness as he wearily climbed to his feet. "What's the big idea, huh?"

Shikamaru was trying to think of something to say to prevent an all-out shouting match between the two of them—_the last thing we need is some stupid fight—_but Kiba's response was enough to freeze the blood in his veins: "I stopped because I smelled people up ahead. And Akamaru smells them, too, don't you, boy?"

The small white dog offered a confirming yip to Kiba's words before giving a half-hearted growl in Naruto's direction.

_It's nothing, _Shikamaru thought. _Please let it be nothing…. _"Neji?"

"I'm ahead of you," answered the older boy, the veins of the Byakkugan already clearly defined around his pale eyes. "And Inuzuka's right. There's a large group of people approaching us from directly ahead."

"Any chance they're friendly?"

Neji shook his head. "They're wearing the enemy's uniform."

"Can you tell how many there are so I know how many asses I get to kick?" Naruto queried.

Before Neji could reply, Hinata said, "A lot…more than—than twenty at least." Everybody turned to look at the girl with surprise. It was the first time she had spoken since they'd left their campsite that morning. With her cheeks flaming an even darker red than her sunburn, she deactivated her Byakkugan to stare down at her toes.

The expression on Neji's face in response to Hinata's interruption was something between shock and anger. For a moment, Shikamaru wondered whether the Hyuuga prodigy was going to say something cutting to his cousin, but then the older boy recovered himself enough to say, "Hinata's right. We're outnumbered at least three to one and that's counting Sasuke and Kiba as eligible fighters in our number."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Kiba bristled. "I'm no invalid."

Naruto grinned. "Don't worry Kiba; I'll take care of your share of the fighting."

"Oh, please. I might be a little injured, but I can still take out more of those bastards than you could ever dream of," Kiba replied, accompanied by a series of indignant barks from Akamaru.

"Oh yeah? Well I bet I get twice as many—"

"Shut up; both of you just shut up!" Ino snapped. "Nobody's doing any fighting—Shikamaru, tell them that nobody's doing any fighting."

"Why not?"

Sakura turned to face Naruto with an exasperated sigh. "Because, _Naruto, _Sasuke's too sick to defend himself. Do you want to get him killed?"

Ino nodded her agreement before adding, "Besides that, our mission is to get to the Sand village safely, not get tangled up in a bunch of fights. Right, Shikamaru?"

_They're right—but we might not have any choice, _Shikamaru thought. _We're wide out in the open and there's nowhere to hide._

"Not to rush you, but another group of ten enemies is closing in from behind," Neji stated. "We're being tracked, no doubt about it."

_Damn. _"How long have we got?"

"I estimate we've got less than three minutes before they come over the dunes and see us. What are your orders?"

Shikamaru stiffened at the Hyuuga's words. He had not forgotten that Tsunade had appointed him as leader, but until that moment it had never occurred to him that he would be expected to give any orders beyond "Let's get going" and "Let's stop here." Now with six pairs of eyes trained on him, all of them demanding to hear a strategy he was acutely aware of what that role entailed.

An edge of panic twisted through his gut_—we can't win…there's no time for strategy; no time for plans…no time!—_but he forced it back to say, "They're too close and there's nothing out here that we can use as a cover. No way around it—we're going to have to fight."

He darted a glance around the group in front of him, hoping that none of them had noticed that he'd only pointed out the obvious in a desperate attempt at buying some time to think. They were all staring back at him in rapt attention. The panic flared through him again, but it was dulled by the adrenaline that was pumping into his blood and the fact that now _he had a plan. _It was a feeble, slipshod, ghost of a thing—_but at least it's something, _he told himself.

"From the way they fought in Konoha, their biggest strength is their numbers. They're strong when they're all together, but you must have dropped at least twenty of them back in Konoha, Neji. You, too, Naruto. And Ino and I took some of them out without even using any jutsu. Individually, they're weak."

"So what do you want us to _do?" _Naruto demanded, squirming in place.

Shikamaru didn't know whether to smile or roll his eyes. The blonde's enthusiasm was so obvious he could almost see it oozing from his pores. "Naruto, you and Neji are going to strike the group that's coming in from behind. Since they're stronger when they're together, your job is to keep that group from joining with the first one.

"Everybody else will stay here. Our main priority is to defend Sasuke while disposing of anybody who comes into our striking range. We stay close so we can protect each other and don't let them push us back. Neji and Naruto, as soon as you've done whatever you need to do to incapacitate your group you come back and join us. From there we whittle down their numbers until the threat is gone. Any questions?"  
The only response he received was a tense silence. _Of course nobody wants to say anything, _he thought. _It's a stupid, worthless plan that I just threw together on the fly and they all know it._ A glance around the group of young shinobi clustered around him seemed to suggest otherwise. Naruto and Kiba had adopted a stiffness to their postures but their expressions were confident, almost cocky. The three girls' faces reflected varying degrees of fear underlying a light of solid determination in their eyes. Even Neji appeared to be ready to carry out orders in spite of the grim line that his mouth was puckered into.

_Is this what being a leader is about? _Shikamaru wondered. _Is it really just coming up with plans and hoping nobody notices that behind all the fancy words you're scared just as much as anybody else? Is this how ANBU squad leaders feel? Or Asuma? Or Tsunade? Or—_

"Thirty seconds before they're on top of us," Neji announced.

Shikamaru heard Ino suck in a short, silent gasp beside him. His own nerves were snapping so badly he didn't know how he managed to keep his voice level as he said, "Naruto? Neji? Are you ready to go?"

Both boys gave short, choppy nods. "All right then…move out."

Without another word, the two boys sprinted off, kicking up sprays of sand with each step. Shikamaru watched them go; watched as Naruto formed his hands into a seal and suddenly there were five Narutos and five Nejis, all of them powering up the side of the dune to disappear from view behind its peak.

There was a loud crunch; Kiba and Akamaru chewing down handfuls of soldier pills. A cloud of dust rose above the lip of the dune ahead, accompanied by the crunching shuffle of footsteps in the sand. "Here they come," whispered Sakura.

"They're expecting to take us by surprise," Shikamaru murmured as the first line of brown uniformed enemies came into view. "If we can hit them with an organized attack, we can beat them at their own game."

"What—what should we do?" Hinata gasped. Although she had a fistful of senbon clutched in each hand, but her arms hung limp at her sides, showing no intention of aiming—let alone throwing_—_the weapons.

_Too nervous, _Shikamaru thought. _Everybody's too nervous. Sakura's shaking so badly she can barely hold on to her kunai…and Ino doesn't even have any weapons at all._ Aloud, he said, "Just wait."

"But Shika—"

"Just _wait!" In a few more seconds, they'll be in rage for my Shadow Bind Jutsu. Once they're immobilized, they shouldn't be much of a—_

A derisive snort cut through his train of thought. "Screw that," Kiba growled. "I'm not waiting for them to come and get us. Let's go, Akamaru!"

The small white dog barked out a response that Shikamaru didn't know whether to interpret as enthusiastic consent or frantic worry. Whichever was intended, the nin-dog fell into place beside Kiba as he broke away from the group.

"Kiba, wait—"

"No way, Shikamaru!" the Inuzuka shouted back over his shoulder. "They want a fight so bad; I'll show them a fight! Come on, Akamaru, Beast Human Clone Jutsu!"

_Idiot, _thought Shikamaru as Kiba closed the distance to the ranks of uniformed enemies. _He's only going to scatter them, which makes them harder to catch. They should be at the edge of my range by now; maybe I should just trap him, too._ He folded his hands into the familiar hand seal—and stopped cold when he realized that having noticed the Inuzuka's approach, the uniformed men had come to a stop outside the longest range of the jutsu.

For a split second he considered changing his position, but then he realized that there was _no time _because Kiba was already springing up into the air, aiming for the middle of the ranks.

Sakura stiffened with a quiet gasp as the Inuzuka began to spin in midair. "No!" she shrieked. "Kiba, don't…" She trailed off and with a frustrated growl, started off after him.

"What are you doing, you stupid idiot?" Ino shouted after the girl. "Where do you think you're go—_oohh…." _She grimaced and Shikamaru couldn't hold back a reflexive wince as Kiba's rotations stopped and he dropped to the ground, rolling several feet before grinding to an abrupt halt. Shikamaru didn't know whether the red stain on the front of the boy's shirt meant that his old wounds had reopened or if it was evidence of a completely new injury. All he could tell from the fleeting glimpse he'd seen before the boy landed facedown on the sand was that it was fresh blood.

"_Kiba!" _Hinata gasped. She started forward as though to follow Sakura to the fallen Inuzuka's side.

Shikamaru held up a hand. "Don't."

She jerked to a stop and whispered, "B-but—"

"Look; they're not after him. He's safe." _For the moment at least, _he silently added, watching the ranks of enemies with a wary eye as they filed past Sakura and Kiba to continue their advance forward. Not even the men who passed close enough to touch them spared them a passing glance. Moving as a single unit, the men dug their hands in to a small pocket on the front of their uniforms to withdraw handfuls of senbon. _We, on the other hand, might be in some trouble, _he thought.

He shook his head. _No matter…in a few more steps they'll be in range of my Shadow Bind Jutsu._ He formed his hands into the familiar seal, gathering his chakra to perform the jutsu—and felt an icy shock twist through his guts when he sensed a dangerous glint of metal that came not from the front, but from the side.

There was no time to scream; no time to warn Ino and Hinata of the impending attack. Out of instinct, he tried to drop into a defensive crouch. From the corner of his eye, he could see Ino doing the same. Even as his body crashed down into the hot, gritty sand he knew that it was hopeless. The needles were too well-aimed and there were too many of them to miss. It occurred to him then that it would have been better to stay standing. _At least then they'd hit a vital point and I'd get a quick death. This…is going to be extremely unpleasant._

He braced himself for the tearing, burning sensation of senbon piercing into his back—_If I'm lucky the first one will go deep enough to sever the nerves in my spinal column. At least that way I won't feel any pain—_but it never came. Instead, there was the sound of something whicking through the air at an incredible speed and the clatter of needles dropping to the ground. Cautiously, he cracked an eye open.

Hinata was standing in front of them both and her hands were moving so quickly they were shapeless blurs. Thin, blue threads of chakra were snapping through the air like lightning and needles were raining to the ground around her. Shikamaru climbed to his feet, his mind reeling with questions. _Another group of enemies…where did they come from? How many of them are there? Too many for my Shadow Bind Jutsu?_

He looked past the Hinata to take stock of the new situation. What he saw made his blood run cold: a new group of twenty uniformed men had appeared. At first, he was convinced that it was genjutsu. He wanted to believe that it was a genjutsu—the idea of facing a mini-army of illusions was far less disconcerting than the thought that the enemy's number had suddenly doubled. _But no, _he thought. _The senbon they're throwing are real enough. There's no way I can immobilize all of them now. Even if I had the chakra, my shadow won't stretch enough to catch that many men._

Ino's voice was a thin warble as she said, "Shikamaru? They're still coming. What should we do?"

Shikamaru turned to see that, just as Ino had said, the original group of men had continued to advance. _I might not be able to trap all of the enemies, but I can at least keep that group away. I just hope Hinata can hold this other group at bay long enough—whatever jutsu she's using to deflect those needles, it looks like it eats up a lot of chakra._

For the third time that day, Shikamaru brought his hands into a hand seal—and dropped them back to his sides when Hinata clapped her hand to her cheek with a gasp. A thin trickle of blood oozed between her fingers. Shaking, she turned to face Shikamaru and Ino. She opened her mouth to speak, but her knees buckled, sending her to the ground in a graceless heap. Her voice was a sluggish rasp as she whispered, "The needles…I think—I think they're poisoned." And then her eyes rolled back in her head and she was in a dead faint.

* * *

Sakura grit her teeth against her fury as she gathered chakra to her hands. On the ground beside her, Kiba lay with his arms hugged tightly around his abdomen. His face was bunched with pain and he let out a pathetic moan when Akamaru nuzzled his cheek. Under any other circumstances, Sakura would have felt pity for the suffering boy. Instead, she said, "It serves you right, you idiot. You know you've completely ruined Shikamaru's plan, don't you?"

"I'm sorry," he groaned. "Owwww …"

Hearing the agonized strain in his voice, Sakura felt some of her anger ebb away. _I doubt that he's faking it just to get my sympathy. Shizune told me once that gut wounds are some of the most excruciating injuries. If we were in Konoha they'd probably give him as much morphine as he could take without killing him._ "What did you expect? I told you no sudden movements," she scolded as she knelt on the sand beside him. "You're lucky you didn't rip open the wound on your back, too."

All she received in response was a pain-laden groan. Akamaru nuzzled her arm with a whimper that was so plaintive it put his message across even without Kiba providing a running translation: Help him. _I guess I've let him suffer long enough, _Sakura thought. _I just hope I've got enough chakra to close that wound up again. _

Shaking her head with disgust, she brought attention back to the chakra she'd gathered in her hands. The raw chakra ripped through her pores, burning through the sinews in her arm and hand. Tears sprang to her eyes against the pain and Kiba jerked against the burning chakra with a hoarse scream. Sakura didn't know whether it was because she was expecting it to hurt or whether it was because she was exhausted, but the pain seemed worse than it had been last night. She felt as though razor-sharp grains of sand were scouring through her veins. From the way Kiba's body was convulsing, she guessed that he felt something vaguely the same. It was unpleasant enough that she was all too happy to oblige when he wheezed, "Sakura, s—stop."

She glanced down to inspect her handiwork. The wound had stopped bleeding, but the gash was a deep pink color and gleaming with a sticky wetness. "I can't leave it the way it is. It'll get infected."

"I know," he gasped. His chest heaved as he sucked in shaking gulps of air. "Just…just give me a minute, OK?"

Sakura leaned back, away from his shivering body. She watched him close his eyes as she massaged her aching arm and thought, _Medical jutsu aren't supposed to hurt like this. This never happened when Shizune or Tsunade used them—I must be doing something wrong._

Kiba's voice cut through her thoughts as an indistinct, half-whispered croak: "How are the others doing?"

"What?"

He cracked an eye open but remained otherwise motionless. "The fight—can you see if everybody is all right?"

She glanced back over her shoulder—and swallowed back a horrified gasp. There were so many brown-uniformed men she could barely see Shikamaru and Ino through them all. She saw no sign of Hinata until she realized that the Hyuuga girl was lying on the ground beside Sasuke, well outside the ring of enemies that threatened Ino and Shikamaru.

"Shikamaru and Ino are surrounded," she whispered. "And Hinata is down."

"Wh—what? Hinata!" He made an attempt to sit up and plopped back to the ground with a pained hiss. "Is she OK? She's still alive, right? Sakura, she's alive, isn't she?"

_I have no idea. _"Yes; she's just unconscious. She'll be—oooh…."

"What is it?" He made a second unsuccessful attempt to sit up which ended in an unmasked yelp of pain. "Sakura, what is it? Tell me what happened. What's wrong?"

Without any words of warning, Sakura forced as much chakra as she dared into her aching, cramped hand and poured it into the half-healed wound on his abdomen. Kiba spasmed against the sudden chakra burn, a ragged scream boiling from his lips. Sakura barely heard his screams. Instead her attention was focused on a group of men who had broken away from the crowd surrounding Shikamaru and Ino and who were now running towards her and Kiba at an alarming pace.

_Come on, come __**on, **_she thought, trying to will the wound to heal faster. She could sense the scar tissue forming, soft and wet and vulnerable at first and then hardening to take on a tough, leathery quality. As soon as the wound was closed, she yanked her hand away from it as though she'd been burned. Kiba shrieked and twisted away, clutching his arms around his abdomen and wheezing for breath. Akamaru was barking frantically and nuzzling the boy's cheeks. Sakura heard Kiba blearily respond, "What, boy? Who's coming?"

Sakura dug in her weapons pouch for a kunai but even as her fingers curled around the grip she felt a handful of senbon pierce her arms, legs, and neck. She screamed, although the pain seemed muted, as though it was something completely separate from her body. _Tranquilizer? _she wondered as her numb legs buckled and she crashed to the ground. Clumsy fingers fumbling, she pulled one of the needles from her arm. Even through her rapidly blurring vision, she could see the crust of white powder on its tip well enough to identify it. _Thiopental. Fast-acting barbiturate. Used for short-term general anesthesia in both humans and animals. Wonder if Kiba would know that…I bet his sister would have…._

From far, far away, she heard shouting. She wondered who it was and what they were saying. Had Kiba been hit with any of the needles? "Mmmm…no more sudden movements," she slurred.

She thought she heard Kiba barking out her name—or was it Akamaru? Somewhere in the farthest corner of her mind she knew that she needed to keep her eyes open, needed to stay awake, needed to keep fighting, needed to—she closed her eyes and surrendered to the quiet roar of unconsciousness.

* * *

Too fast—everything was happening too fast. Shikamaru knew that there was no time to reflect on how badly the battle was going. The men who had them surrounded were throwing volley after volley of senbon and it was all he and Ino could do to dodge, deflect, and otherwise avoid the flying weapons. Even so, his mind kept drifting back to the unpleasant facts:

_From the way he'd been bleeding as he crashed to the ground, Kiba's break with the plan may have cost him his life. Hinata had gone down even though she'd followed the plan to the letter. He and Ino were being pushed back, back, inexorably back with every volley of needles. Sasuke was in no condition to fight and now he was completely unprotected. Sakura had gone down trying to help Kiba—it was the last thing he'd seen before he and Ino were forced up and over the dunes and that part of the battle was hidden by the mountain of sand._

"We can't keep doing this forever," Ino panted over the clatter of throwing needles glancing off kunai.

_She's right, _he thought. The already unbearable desert heat was starting to make his head swim with the added effort of dodging the waves of needles. He could feel his movements becoming clumsy, uncoordinated and his guts were churning. _At this rate we're both going to drop dead of heat stroke. Unless they manage to nail us with those senbon first. Things just keep getting better and better._

"Shikamaru, can you think of a way out of this?"

_If there was only more time; if there was only somewhere to take cover; if there were only trees and shrubs to hide in like there were in Konoha…. They're not even giving us enough time to make hand seals between their volleys. Not that that would make much of a difference anyway—neither of us have enough chakra to trap this many people with our jutsu for very long. If Chouji were here—_ He cut the idea off with a sharp shake of his head. His friend's death was still too fresh; the thought was like a raw, exposed nerve scraping in his chest. Aloud, he said, "We need Naruto or Neji to break their ranks and cause a distraction."

Ino shot him an incredulous look. _"That's_ your plan? Wait and hope that someone comes to save our butts?"

"It's either that or hope that these guys run out of senbon very, very soon."

"Augh! No offense, Shikamaru, but that plan sucks!"

"I know," he grunted, twisting to avoid a smattering of needles to the gut. "I'm working on it." _Although at this point I don't think we've got any other options. The only way for us to go is back, which is exactly where they want us to go because that would take us straight into the other group that Naruto and Neji are fighting. I hope they're faring better than we are—for their sake and for ours._

"HOLD!" The command was so unexpected that Shikamaru reflexively continued to dodge the shower of needles for several seconds after it had ceased. It took him a moment to recognize that it had come from one of the brown-uniformed men before them—a wiry man with a bright red banner tied around his arm. It occurred to him that this was the first time he had heard any of the men speak. He wondered whether the man who had spoken was some sort of commanding officer. The men brought their weapons up into a striking position and stood stock-still poised to throw them at a moment's notice. Shikamaru tensed, expecting to dodge a new barrage of needles. Beside him, he sensed Ino doing the same.

Three seconds later, four Naruto shadow clones barreled past the two of them, heading for the enemies ahead. In perfect synchronization, they leapt into the air, rocketing towards the men standing in their way. Before any of them could hit their mark, the red-banner man screamed, "RELEASE!" The clones disappeared in a hail of senbon, but before their disappearing smoke had cleared there were six more clones racing in to take their place. Shikamaru stood frozen, watching the resulting chaos until he felt a hand clamp down on his wrist and jerk him back, out of the range of the enemies' weapons. From somewhere beside him, he heard Ino scream as she was yanked backwards in a similar fashion. He felt a flash of adrenaline-laced panic—the urge to stab blindly with the kunai in his free hand was overpowering—and then he heard a voice saying, "Naruto and I have neutralized the threat from the group behind. What are your orders?"

_Neji, _Shikamaru thought. _It's Neji._ He glanced back to the ranks of brown-clad enemies and felt a twist of savage satisfaction when he saw that their ranks were in disorder, doing all they could to defend themselves against a gaggle of screaming, shouting, brawling Naruto clones. "There's another group of them over the dune," he said. "Hinata, Sakura—both of them are down and last I saw, Kiba was hurt. Help them if you can."

The Hyuuga prodigy gave a curt nod and then he was running up the side of the steep dune. Shikamaru held his breath as the long-haired boy passed by the seething, fighting mass. The enemies were so occupied with defending against Naruto's shadow clone barrage that they didn't pay the long-haired boy any notice and he slipped out of sight over the crest of the dune unhindered.

"So now what?" Ino demanded.

Shikamaru grinned. "Now it's time for a new strategy. Come on; I'm going to need you for this."

He started towards the mess of Naruto clones and uniformed enemies without bothering to explain things any further. Ino followed without saying a word. It was then that he realized how grateful he was that it was Ino at his side. If it had been anybody besides his longtime teammate, they would demand an explanation; force him to say exactly what he was thinking and what the plan was and who was supposed to be where and when. Ino wouldn't do any of those things. For all their weaknesses, team ten had always functioned as a single unit in the heat of battle, without orders, without words, without thought. It reminded him once again just how badly he missed Chouji.

They came to a stop just outside of the writhing boundaries of the brawl. The men had decimated the Naruto clones in the time it had taken to send Neji on his way. As Shikamaru watched, a clone let out a yelp and disappeared in a puff of smoke. The enemies were beginning to reform their ranks despite the clones' best efforts to keep them disorganized. It was precisely this that allowed Shikamaru to spot his target: the man with the red banner around his arm.

_Just keep them distracted a little longer, Naruto, _he thought, forming his hands into a seal. He glanced up to make sure his target was still in range. The red banner man was so busy barking out orders ("REGROUP! REFORM RANKS!") that he hadn't moved an inch. He was still standing at the very edge of the fray.

Shikamaru shook his head. It was almost too easy. With a spurt of chakra, he sent his shadow snaking across the sand. Seconds later, the red banner man's ram-rod posture relaxed to mirror Shikamaru's habitual slouch. "Shadow Bind Jutsu successful. Your turn, Ino."

He sensed Ino moving beside him, forming her hands into her own characteristic seal, taking aim, murmuring the name of the jutsu under her breath. Her body slumped to the ground, limp, unmoving. Her head smashed against his leg on the way down, jerking her chin up to expose the scar along her jaw line. Shikamaru tried to ignore the wound, but the vivid red stripe seared through his peripheral vision, demanding that he lookat the ugly thing. Moving only his eyes, he glanced down to see the scar more clearly. _Half an inch lower and it would have dug into her neck, _he thought. _Severed the carotid artery. Killed her. She's lucky—very lucky—but that scar's never going to go away. Dad's scars looked exactly like that when they were fresh._

A snatch of a memory flitted through his head at the thought of his father's scars. _It was dark and cold and stormy and way past bedtime for any three year old but mom was crying and she thought he couldn't hear her but he could and he didn't know why she was so upset but he did know that it had something to do with Chouza who had come hours ago to talk about an "Accident" in hushed whispers because he thought that Shikamaru was already asleep—_

He felt a sudden lurch as the man with the red banner stopped struggling against the Shadow Bind. The memory disintegrated back into the shadows of his mind as he canceled the jutsu, his shadow snapping back across the sand to assume its natural shape. The red-bannered man stood still for several more seconds, glancing around his re-forming ranks. The Naruto clones had left several of them bruised and bloodied, but most of the brown-uniformed men were still standing. The men stretched to a rigid posture as they felt their leader's eyes on them. He gave them an approving nod before glancing back over his shoulder.

With Ino lying prone on the ground beside him and Naruto nowhere to be seen, Shikamaru was uncomfortably aware of the fact that he was the only shinobi in sight. _If it came down to a fight between me and all of them I'd be dead in a heartbeat, _he thought, doing his best to resist the urge to squirm under the man's scrutinizing stare. A flicker of movement jumped across the man's face. It was sudden and blink-and-you-miss-it quick, but it was unmistakably a wink. He smiled. _Lucky for me it's not going to come down to a fight after all…._

The red-bannered man turned back to his troops, who stood poised to attack. He raised his hand into the air. Then he yelled, "RETREAT!"

The ranks of brown-uniformed men dropped their rigid posture. They exchanged confused looks. Some of them took two or three uncertain steps back only to jerk to a graceless halt as though in daze. The red-bannered man shouted, "RETREAT, I said! That's an ORDER!"

For several seconds, the brown-uniformed men stayed stock still. Then a shudder passed through their ranks. One man, then two, then three, then ten, half, all of the men were turning an about-face, preparing for a retreat. _Good job, Ino, _thought Shikamaru. _It's working. Now all you have to do is stay in character for as long as you can and get back here safely so we can all—_

The red-bannered man gave a sudden, unnatural jerk that snapped Shikamaru out of his train of thought and set his instincts on edge. _Something's wrong, _he thought, watching as the red-bannered man darted a glance left, right, behind. Then the red-bannered man gave another jerk, strong enough this time to send him tumbling to the ground with his ankle bent at a sickening angle.

A handful of uniformed men rushed forward to help the red-bannered man to his feet, but Shikamaru didn't bother to watch their efforts. He barely even registered the dull popping sound of Ino's ankle as it broke to match the man's injury. He had seen something; a shadow of movement that was so brief it was like a ghost flitting across his peripheral vision: a hand disappearing beneath the sand. _So that's where Naruto disappeared to, _he thought.

For a moment, he was relieved. Relieved that Naruto was still in fighting condition. Relieved that he and Ino weren't the only shinobi standing against this mass of brown enemies. Relieved because Naruto must have been aiming for a different enemy because he wouldn't aim an attack at the red-bannered man knowing that Ino was controlling him….

Then he saw the sand shifting around the red-bannered man and realization stabbed through him, wrenching his guts. _Naruto doesn't know about Ino, _he thought. _He couldn't know—he's been hiding in the sand the whole time and now he's going to…! _"Ino," he shouted, "Get back in your body right now!"

The red-bannered man gave him a bewildered look (which was accompanied by expressions of equally comical bewilderment on the faces of the uniformed enemy troops surrounding him), but started to form his hands into the seal that would release the Mind Transfer jutsu. It was at that moment that Naruto burst up out of the sand in all his orange sweat suit glory to deliver a perfect uppercut to the red-bannered man's chin.

Several things happened as the red-bannered man fell to the ground. Ino's body gave a corresponding jerk and a thin trickle of blood dripped from the corner of her mouth. A volley of senbon flew through the air to bury themselves in Naruto's back, arms, and legs. He gave a clipped yelp of pain and then dropped to the ground, as unconscious as the man he had just hit. Shikamaru realized then that he was alone—totally and absolutely _alone—_against twenty armed and dangerous men. The uniformed men appeared to realize this as well. Without wasting a second, they were moving towards Shikamaru as a single unit; a mass of brown approaching at a dead sprint.

Shikamaru stared at the troupe of approaching enemies and swore under his breath. Then he formed his hands into the proper hand seal and shouted, "Shadow Bind jutsu!"

* * *

Kiba strained to keep the scream that was boiling in the back of his throat from leaving his mouth. Even with the wound closed and even with Sakura lying unconscious on the sand beside him, he could feel the foreign chakra burning through his system. He clamped his jaws together, strained the sinews in his neck until the muscles stood in taught relief, screwed his eyes closed. He could smell the enemy well enough through the haze that was swirling in his head to know that he would die if he made even the slightest sound or gave even the smallest twitch. Even so, he felt the scream bubble into his mouth, demanding that he voice the pain that was searing through his abdominal area and it was only the blessed realization that the pain was fading that kept the scream from pouring out.

The pain had ebbed to a level that was close to bearable when Akamaru stopped nuzzling his cheek and started to growl. Seconds later, Kiba sensed something small flick past his face. He had just enough time to register the smell that the objects trailed behind them—a faint odor that resembled the stench of rotting onions—when Akamaru gave a clipped yip and went silent.

Kiba felt a lump of worry well up in his throat. _That smelled like Hana's lab, _he thought. _The stuff she used to knock out dogs that needed operations. Did they just…? _He risked cracking an eye open and felt a sinking sensation when his suspicions were confirmed: Akamaru was laying absolutely still save for the slow rise and fall of his chest. The small dog's body hid most of the throwing needle from view, but Kiba could see its tip protruding from the nape of his neck.

At the sight of the cold metal, Kiba's worry twisted into rage. _Those bastards hurt Akamaru, _he thought. _I might not be able to sit up and I'm probably about to be dead, but I'm taking a couple of those assholes down with me!_

A shadow fell over his face and Kiba closed his eye as the uniformed man came close enough to stand by his side. He had to resist the urge to wrinkle his nose with disgust: the man gave off a pungent stink of sweat, onions, and fear. The tip of a steel-toed boot nudged against his cheek, probing. Kiba let the muscles in his neck go slack and his head rolled back with the boot's prodding. From several meters away, he heard a voice inquire, "Is that one dead?"

The pressure of the boot against his cheek changed as the man shifted his weight to look back in the direction the voice had come from. Before the man could give an answer, Kiba clamped his hands around the ankle of the boot nearest his face and pulled with all the strength he could pump into his arms. Kiba heard the man give a surprised squawk and felt his muscles working through the thick leather of the boot, straining to keep him on his feet. He gave another tug and the man crashed to the ground beside him, kicking a spray of sand into Kiba's eyes.

Kiba bellowed against the sting but didn't let the pain distract him from his goal. Eyes streaming, he struck out blindly and caught something soft and fleshy with his naturally sharp nails. Beside him, the man made a gurgling noise. Kiba felt hot, sticky blood smear across his fingers. A fist slammed into the side of his head and stars flashed behind his eyes, but Kiba continued to slash, widening the wound he had opened. The blood was smeared over his hands, pattering onto the sand to form sticky, black slicks against the sand.

His eyes were clearing and he saw the world through a warbling, snapshot lens of tears and adrenaline. _Flash! _He saw the wound, just a flash of red and pink and something clear like gelatin all mixed together in the area where shoulders and neck meet. _Flash! _He saw the other men—Five of them? Ten?—running towards their fallen comrade. _Flash! _Needles shooting through the air; needles that smelled like rotting onions. _Flash! _A whirlwind of sand blocking the line of men from view and the clatter of needles clacking against each other as they twirled off course.

_Neji's Heavenly Spin, _Kiba realized. _Talking about your lucky breaks…. _A laugh bubbled up in his throat and came out as a choked cough when a handful of sand found its way into his mouth. He spat, trying to clean the grainy feeling from his mouth, but he could still feel it crunching between his teeth and scratching against his tongue.

Another handful of sand pelted against his face and he narrowed his eyes to slits to prevent another episode of painful blindness. Ignoring the way his abdominal muscles juddered against the exertion, he crawled back, away from the whirlwind of sand in front of him to avoid any more mishaps—but rather than growing clearer, the air only seemed to become even more full of sand as he crawled.

_Heavenly Spin doesn't have a range this big, _Kiba thought. He bowed his head against the granules of sand that were pelting his face and felt it sting against the back of his neck instead. _Is this an actual sandstorm? Where's Neji?_

"Neji," he shouted. He didn't dare try to smell the boy out. _The last thing I need right now is a nose full of dirt and a sinus infection, _he thought. _Wouldn't that just be the icing on the cake?_ "NEJI!"

He strained his ears and thought he heard shouting. Everything sounded tinny and far away in the opaque fog of yellow that had sprung up around them. There was a spark of blue chakra, followed by two more snaps of blue. A long silence. Then: "Kiba?"  
"Neji?"

"They're all down now, Kiba. Shikamaru, Ino, and Naruto are fighting a different group and they might need our help. Can you fight?"

_No. Not really. _"Yeah. Where are you?"

"Stay where you are. I'll come to you."

Kiba twisted around, surprised. "Are you behind me?" He crawled towards the direction he thought he'd heard Neji's voice come from and gasped when something sharp jabbed into his finger. Swearing under his breath, he pulled his hand back and felt something cold and thin and hard dangling from the injured joint. He seized it with his good hand and pulled it free with a grunt. A smell that was similar to old onions wafted to his nose. It was then that he realized what he held in his hands: a senbon.

"Oh, you've got to be _kidding _me," he muttered. But already his limbs felt heavy, and his head was swimming. His final thought before dropping unconscious was, _If Naruto finds out about this I'll never hear the end of it._

* * *

Shikamaru squinted against the sand that was swirling into his face. The tiny granules were pelting against every sunburned bit of exposed skin on his arms, legs, and neck. He could feel its grainy texture clinging against his sweat-soaked form; an uncomfortable scratching sensation in the creases of his elbows and knees. All he could see of the men trapped in his Shadow Bind jutsu were hazy, gray smudges against a background of hazy, gray dust.

Even though he could feel the men straining against his Shadow Bind well enough to know that they were securely trapped, Shikamaru couldn't shake a feeling of unease. The opaque curtain of dust that was hanging in the air felt no different than smoke bombs, flash bombs, genjutsu—weapons that were designed to blind and incapacitate. _I suppose I should be grateful, _he thought. _After all, this giant cloud makes everything into one big shadow, which means that I get unlimited range._

He poured an experimental spurt of chakra into the jutsu, urging to shadows to form into the hands necessary for Shadow Neck Bind. A burning, cramping sensation settled into his muscles in response. With a groan, he canceled the effect and sank to the ground. His captives mirrored the movement, but the burning feeling continued to wind through his muscles, twisting through his gut and sharpening into an uncomfortable cramping sensation. _This is bad, _he thought. _What good is unlimited range when I barely have enough chakra left to stand up?_

Shikamaru didn't know whether the men could sense the way his chakra reserves were straining, but their struggling seemed sharper, wilder, more difficult to contain. He could feel his own shadow wavering, threatening to break. With another pained groan, he flopped onto his hands and knees and forced as much of his remaining chakra as he dared into the jutsu.

The shivering strand of chakra-laced shadow steadied and for one moment Shikamaru felt the men go still as the jutsu's effects washed over them. Then, with a burn of straining chakra, the strand broke. Shikamaru felt his shadow snap back into itself with such force it made his trembling arms give out and then he was laying face-down in the sand.

Through the feverish haze of overexertion, he knew that he had to get to his feet, had to try and fight, had to get away before the enemy men got to him. He could hear the uniformed men shouting to each other over the roaring of the wind, knew that they were close. Trying to focus on the wind, the sand, his own sweat-sticky clothing—anything besides the seizing, cramping muscles in his arms and legs—he pushed himself into a sitting position.

A giant of a dark figure loomed out of the cover of the sand. Shikamaru couldn't see a face—the man seemed to tower over him and the cloud of dust and sand had become so thick that it was impossible to see any details beyond a few feet. The only thing that seemed to be real about the man were his kneecaps, encased in the loose-fitting brown uniform and framed by the tops of his boots and a leg holster full of senbon.

A big, beefy hand appeared, snatching a handful of the needles up between its thick fingers. Shikamaru tried to move, tried to crawl back, out of the man's sight, but his arms shuddered under his weight and he fell onto his back. _So this is it, _he thought, watching the hand disappear into the sand as its owner pulled it up into a throwing position. _This is how I die. Guess it could have been worse._

He tensed, waiting for the needles to bury themselves in his neck, chest, eyes—_Anywhere but the eyes, _he thought—and then there was a snap of blue chakra, a grunt, and the feet stumbled back and out of sight.

Shikamaru blinked with surprise. _Gentle Fist? _he wondered. Two more flashes of chakra were confirmation enough. _That was definitely Gentle Fist. _"Remind me to thank Neji if we somehow make it out of this alive," he muttered for the benefit of any friend, ally, or benevolent higher power that might have cared to listen.

"Oh, don't worry," replied a low, wheezing voice. "You _won't!"_

Shikamaru didn't have the energy to try and move out of reach of the man who had spoken. Even when the man plopped down to drive his knee into his gut, Shikamaru could barely muster the strength to grunt against the pain. He felt big, rough hands around his neck, squeezing. His throat pushed out a dry cough around the pressure and he worked his jaw, trying to suck in a gasping breath and getting nothing. He pulled at the hands, scratched against the fingers around his neck hard enough to draw blood. A face swam into view through the dark of the dust and his wavering vision; a mousy, ugly face pulled back into a cruel grin.

The man's lips were moving, but Shikamaru couldn't hear what he was saying. His eyes felt as though they were swelling, popping out of their sockets. He pulled at the man's hands, but it felt as though his own hands were feathers beating against iron clamps. He could feel the man driving his thumbs down, trying to crush his windpipe, making his eyes tear and even though Shikamaru knew that he couldn't afford to give up, his hands fell away from the ones around his throat.

Through the rushing in his head, he could hear the man's laughter as he weakly thrashed his arms. A dry gag pulled from his lips; sand was everywhere; everything was so dark—he felt something cold, thin, hard, steel—a senbon—and his fingers closed around it automatically, instinctively. Without thinking or seeing or knowing, he jabbed up, burying the object into something soft yet resistant.

The hands around his neck convulsed once and then the iron fingers went loose and Shikamaru felt the man's limp body fell on top of him. Shikamaru sucked in a deep, convulsive breath of air and then he was coughing, fighting to pull in more air through the coughs that sandpapered his throat. He felt his stomach roiling. For the barest second he wondered whether he was about to be sick and then the nausea was fading and his head was clearing.

He wiggled out from underneath the man's unconscious body and sat up. A wave of dizziness washed over him with the sudden movement, but he listened for any sign of Neji or any of the enemy men. He heard nothing.

"Neji?" He winced. His voice had been reduced to a hoarse croak and it hurt to speak.

The answer came from somewhere to the left. "I'm here. You got the last one, Shikamaru."

"Can you see the others?"

A pause. Then: "Yes."

Shikamaru didn't think he'd ever been more grateful to have the Hyuuga clan's Byakkugan on his side. "How are they?"

"It looks like Hinata is waking up. Naruto, too. What are your orders?"

Shikamaru felt an incredulous laugh bubble in the back of his throat. _Even after that miserable failure I'm still the leader? _He swallowed it back. His throat ached too much to attempt laughing. "We need to get out of here. If Hinata's waking up, some of these men will wake up soon, too."

Beside him, the outline of Neji's frame swam into view, growing clearer until Shikamaru could see the other boy clearly through a muted filter of gray. His long hair was disheveled and there was a purple bruise that was visible through the blotchy sunburn on his cheeks, but he was otherwise unscathed. Without a word, he offered Shikamaru a hand and helped him to stand.

Shikamaru felt a residual wave of dizziness and then there was a voice shouting, "What? It's over? Aw man; I missed all the good parts!"

_That would be Naruto, _he thought. Aloud, he said, "Come on; let's get everyone rounded up and get out of here."

* * *

**Author's Notes: **Whew. That was a fun chapter to write. Hope you had as much fun reading this chapter as I did writing it! Now to answer some questions. First, about Kakashi: yes, he's alive. No, I haven't forgotten him. He _will_ be coming back…eventually. As for Tenten: OK, you caught me. I _did _sort of forget about her. I may or may not have her make a cameo appearance later. We'll see. For any other questions the best answer I can give at the moment is this: assume nothing. :p

LittleMana: Thanks again for the suggestion. I changed the summary a little and hopefully, this reflects the spirit of the story a bit more accurately.

Thanks to LittleMana, ArjunaAnja, unreproachablephoenix, Leigh4, Gulanticus, and xXxTsukuyomixXx for reviewing. I really, really appreciate knowing what people like (or don't like) about my writing!


	10. The Oasis

CHAPTER TEN

Sakura clenched her jaw, resisting the urge to scratch at the peeling sunburn that had colored her shoulders and arms an angry shade of maroon. She was so _tired. _Tired of the sun. Tired of the sand and the way it itched as it got stuck in her hair and clothing. Tired of being hungry and thirsty. Tired of wondering what was happening in Konoha _(Had anybody else managed to escape? Was there even anybody left to save?). _But most of all, she was tired of being tired.

The heat and the hunger and the thirst and the exhaustion were a lethal combination on more than a physical level. Through the blistering sunburns and the sticky dry mouth and the heaviness in her legs, she could feel her temper simmering. _Three days, _she thought. _We've been wandering around in this sand trap for three days and still no sign of the Sand Village. _For the first time, she allowed herself to think the words that had been hiding in the back of her mind; the words that everybody knew to be true but nobody wanted to be the first to speak aloud: _We're lost._

Her boiling temper flared at the thought. She wanted to scream at Shikamaru until her throat ached because it was _all his fault._ He had been the one who insisted that they press on through the sand storm (to "put distance between us and the enemy", he had said). Now, when they were clearly lost, he refused to breech the subject in order to discuss what options they had left (which were precious few at this point, with no food and very little water). _He's the leader, _she thought. _It's his responsibility to lead. Why doesn't he do something?_

If it hadn't been so hot and if she hadn't been so exhausted, she would have yelled at him, forced him to _say something. _She settled with sending him a poisonous glare instead. Her anger continued to seethe until her eyes fell on the two oval-shaped purple bruises underneath his Adam's apple. Her conscience gave an uncomfortable twist as she remembered the croaking whisper that he had spoken in following their confrontation with the uniformed men.

With effort, she swallowed back her anger and turned her attention to the rest of their band. Just by observing the way that Hinata's shoulders slumped or the way that Naruto's head bowed to stare down at the ground, she could tell that everybody else was as exhausted as she felt. Even Neji the ever-disciplined Hyuuga prodigy had allowed himself to droop into a graceless slouch—though Sakura suspected that this had more to do with the fact that he had been assigned the unfortunate task of carrying Ino on his back.

Sakura had been sympathetic when she learned that her on-again, off-again best friend had sustained a broken ankle, but she had refused to attempt to heal the damaged joint. Her chakra coils were still burning after pouring such a large amount of chakra into closing Kiba's wound for the second time in as many days. _The last thing we need right now is for me to go and knock myself out with chakra overuse, _she'd thought. _Then we'd have another invalid to add to our list._

Nobody had spoken for hours. The last attempt at conversation had involved Naruto razzing Kiba over how poorly he had performed against the enemy when they had been ambushed. Sakura suspected that he and Kiba would have gotten into an all-out brawl if not for the unbearable heat. _Small miracles, _she thought. _Kiba's still in no condition to be fighting, no matter how much he insists that he is. That scar on his stomach still looked bad when I wrapped it this morning. If he's not careful, it'll get infected._

She winced. The word 'infected' made her think of illness—which automatically brought her thoughts back to one of their most desperate problems of all. She stole a quick glance in Naruto's direction, to the shrouded figure that hung limply between two Shadow Clones and immediately wished she hadn't. Even though she had taken on almost full responsibility of caring for Sasuke whenever their motley group stopped to rest, it was still an uncomfortable shock to see the Uchiha boy _(her teammate, her friend, her first and only crush) _in such a state.

_How on earth am I going to do anything to help him without water? _She wondered. _How many days will we survive out here without water? _The portion of her mind that had filed away all of her med-nin training promptly responded: _Not days. Hours. We're losing so much liquid in our sweat alone that dehydration will kick in less than an hour after we drink our last drops. First there'll be headaches. Then dizziness. Then chills. Then coma. Then your organs start to fail and that's the way you're going to die out here, one by one until—_

"Water." The word was spoken as a whisper. It was so quiet that Sakura didn't know whether she had really heard it or whether it had been nothing more than the product of wishful thinking. But then: "I can see water."

Everybody turned their eyes to Hinata. The quiet girl shifted from foot to foot under their eyes but kept her eyes focused on the horizon with the intense glare of the Byakkugan. "It's less than a mile away. There's a…a dip in the sand. It's there."

"Are you sure it's not a mirage?"

Neji fixed Sakura with a glare that might have been indignant if not for the intensity of his activated Byakkugan. "The Byakkugan can't be fooled by something as simple as a mirage," he said. "There's a dip in the sand just past those dunes with what appears to be a small oasis."

There was no discussion on the matter. Without exchanging a word, the group turned towards the dunes. Nobody even bothered to ask the Byakkugan users to confirm that there were no enemies near the water. Sakura knew that this was wrong. Beyond the sun-baked heat and the parched grittiness in her mouth, she was aware that even a first-year academy student would know better than to rush into an unsecured area without checking for any sign of traps from the enemy. The burning in her throat was so terrible she didn't care.

The idea of the soothing, cold water—it would be cold; it _had _to be!—in her mouth and trickling down her throat was all that kept her legs moving as they trudged across the bleak stretch of sand that stood between them and the dunes. All she could think of was how wonderful it would feel to splash her face clean and get some of the grit out of her hair. Then her eyes fell on Naruto's Shadow Clones and the figure between them and her spirits dipped.

Sticky with sweat, Sasuke's sheet looked as though it had attracted every stray grain of sand they had encountered on their trek across the desert. The sweat itself had tainted the sheet, turning its color from pristine white to dingy yellow. There was a stain of dried sick near his head _(When had that happened? Sakura had no memory of seeing the boy vomit.)_ Worse yet, it occurred to her then that Kiba had changed his position in the group every time the wind shifted. A glance at the doggish boy confirmed her suspicions: Kiba was in a position upwind of the sick boy. Sakura felt a coil of shame. _I haven't been taking very good care of him, _she thought._ Even if our resources are limited, there's no excuse for letting him get filthy._

Determined to remedy this wrong, she pushed to the front of the group to walk beside Naruto. He didn't seem to notice that she was there. Instead, his eyes were focused on the peak of the dune that they had begun to climb. Sakura cleared her paper-dry throat and whispered, "Naruto?"

The blond boy gave a startled jump and then stretched his mouth into a wide grin when he turned to see who had spoken. "Hi, Sakura." He narrowed his eyes into an expression of mock-suspicion and added, "How come you're sneaking up on me?"

Sakura shivered. For all his toothy grins and cheery antics, she could see that his eyes were watery. _He was upset, _she thought. _Probably thinking about the invasion. _Aloud, she said, "I wanted to ask you to do me a favor."

His grin stretched so wide that his eyes were reduced to narrow slits. "Sure. What is it?"

A snatch of a memory flitted through Sakura's mind—_an Academy-aged Naruto cackling over one or another of his pranks with his face contorted into a too-wide, vulpine grin and tears of mirth glimmering in his eyes…. _She stared at the Naruto before her now, wearing an identical expression on his face and wondered, _Has he always been this way, even before the invasion? Has it always just been an act to cover up—_

"Helo-o-o," Naruto sang out, waving a hand in front of her face. "Earth to Sakura. I said, 'what do you want me to do?'"

"Sorry, Naruto," she muttered. She peered into his eyes but now there was no trace of the glittering wetness she'd seen there before. _Maybe I imagined it, _she thought. _Maybe he really is just a carefree idiot after all. _"I wanted to ask you to clean Sasuke up a little when we get to the water. I'll clean the sheet."

His eyes flicked over to the two shadow clones that were carrying Sasuke between them. "Yeah," he said. "Sure."

She studied his face—_Hadn't his grin faltered? Weren't his eyes wet?—_and thought, _That's right; nothing but a carefree idiot. _"Thanks," she whispered.

* * *

A breath of cool wind curled through the dark night air. It was such a gentle breeze that the stiff palm fronds barely swayed and the sand underfoot was perfectly still. Even so, Hinata shivered and zipped her jacket all the way up to her chin.

It had seemed such a relief to reach the oasis while the baking afternoon sun was still glaring down. Although the squat palm trees and scrubby bushes that ringed the pond offered little shade, just the sight of the shimmering water and the green vegetation made the air seem cooler. Now, with the desert sun long-gone beyond the horizon, the air seemed chilled; much cooler than an average evening in Konoha.

_How can a place be so hot during the day and so cold during the night? _She wondered as she pushed through a low-hanging string of palm fronds. _Where does all the heat go?_ But even as the thought entered her mind, she knew that this was not the reason she was shivering. The tight knot of fear that was wedged in her chest was testament enough to that.

_I just have to find Sakura and then everything will be all right, _she thought. _She can tell me that Neji's not…. _She cut herself off mid-thought with a shake of her head. She would not allow herself to think that way because doing so was bound to make her cry and she would _not _allow herself to cry. Carefully, she directed her thoughts back to safer ground.

The oasis water had been blood-warm, but clear and sweet. After everybody drank their fill, Naruto and the other boys had disappeared with the half-conscious Sasuke in tow while Sakura had asked Ino and Hinata to help her wash Sasuke's sheet. The stains were stubborn, some of them refusing to come out even when Hinata scrubbed at them with wet sand. By the time the boys returned with a relatively clean Sasuke (who was bundled in Naruto's jacket as well as the remains of Kiba's coat), all three girls had rubbed their hands raw and the sheet looked no better than it had to begin with. Sakura conceded defeat with a sigh and the three of them had hung the thing to dry over a set of low-hanging palm branches.

Not long after they had finished this task, Naruto returned with the news that Kiba had discovered a crop of wild melons on the other side of the pond. Much as it embarrassed her, Hinata was relieved to have an excuse to get away from Sasuke. The livid rash that covered his face was so stark that it reminded her uncomfortably of the damage she had done to her first kill—a Gentle Fist to the man's face. Ino appeared to be equally relieved to get away, but Sakura opted to stay behind. Hinata felt her conscience give a twist at the idea of leaving Sakura to manage the ill boy alone, but the prospect of fresh, juicy fruit (not to mention the prospect of being led to said fruit by NARUTO) was too enticing to resist. Naruto promised Sakura that he would return with an armload of fruit for her and then the three of them were off.

Hinata blinked. She hadn't seen Sakura since then and she hadn't seen Naruto since he'd left to deliver Sakura's portion of the fruit, either. She wondered whether she would find Sakura in the same place she had seen her last, in a harried muddle crouched beside the ailing Uchiha boy. _Of course she'll be in the same place, _she thought. _She wouldn't move Sasuke again unless she had to…would she? _She shook her head. _No…if she moved Sasuke, she would have to move the sheet, too, and the sheet would get dirty if she moved it while it was still wet._

Adequately reassured, she continued forward until a new thought occurred to her: _What if the sheet is already dry? What if she _did _move? _In her subconscious mind, she knew that she was being ridiculous, that finding the other girl could be as easy as activating her Byakkugan. Even so, her conscious mind continued to spew its doubts, peppering her thoughts with all of the worries she had been trying so desperately to hold at bay for the past several days: _What happened in Konoha? What if the needles those men had thrown had really been poisoned instead of drugged? What if somebody had died? What if Kiba had died? What if Neji or…Naruto…had died? What if we never make it to the Sand village? What if Sasuke dies while we're still lost out here? What if we all die? What if Naruto has been with Sakura ever since he left to take her that fruit?_

Hinata was embarrassed to realize that it was this last thought that gave her the most pain in spite of all that had transpired since they had fled from Konoha. She knew that it was terrible to even think of a crush—let alone _worry_ about one—when the safety of her village was at stake. Even so, no matter how closely she tried to keep her attention on the task at hand, she couldn't stop the thoughts from echoing through her mind like the cawing of a thousand crows: _He hardly even knows I exist. And the way he looks at Sakura…._

She shook her head. _Sasuke is his teammate…maybe he's just worried about him. If it was Kiba or Shino—_(a lump welled in her throat at the thought of her absent teammate. She swallowed it back with effort)—_If it was Kiba or Shino I would be worried, too. Maybe that's it…._

An ugly voice pushed its way through her train of thought: _That's not it at all, and you know it. The real reason he doesn't notice you is because you're a failure. _The word seemed to reverberate in her head, and then the voice changed into a cacophony of hissing whispers: _Failure. Disappointment. Weakling. Unworthy. _

She shivered, recognizing the voices all too well—a choice sampler of the things her clan said about her through their sleeves and behind closed doors. She locked her eyes on the ground, trying to block out their voices, but the words continued to flash through her head. _Hopeless. No talent. An embarrassment._

She felt a sting in her eyes and closed them. _Shameful. _She had become accustomed to the harsh words, but they still hurt. _If Hanabi had been an only child…._ She wanted to cover her ears to block out the words, but she knew that there was no way to stop them. _Worthless, weak, disgraceful—_

It was the arguing voices that lifted her out of her reverie. One was sharp, biting, and furious—_Sakura, _she thought. _Is she fighting with Naruto? _A raw spark of pleasure flared in her chest at the thought. For one instant, it was the only thing she could feel, the only thing she could think about—but no…the other voice was a rasping whisper…Shikamaru.

As quickly as it had appeared, the coal in her chest extinguished, leaving a feeling of cold shame in its place. She could feel the mortified flush setting into her cheeks and creeping across her ears and neck. _Why did I think that…how could I have wished that Sakura and Naruto were…? _She shook her head. _We need to stick together…__**all **__of us. Especially now._

Slowly, she crept toward the fighting voices until she could see Sakura standing with her posture rigid and her hands balled into tight, quivering fists. Even though she was looking directly at the place where Hinata was standing, she didn't appear to notice the other girl. Hinata didn't know whether this was because it was too dark for her to see properly or whether she was too angry to care. Hinata suspected that it was a bit of both. Shikamaru was standing directly in front of Sakura. If the taught line of his jaw wasn't indication enough, the uncomfortable charge that hung in the air between them was evidence enough to convince Hinata that he was just as furious with Sakura as she was with him. Behind the two of them and lying propped against a tree, Sasuke slept fitfully. Hinata noticed that the sweat-soaked boy was still bundled in Kiba's and Naruto's jackets; the sheet that she and the other girls had worked so hard to clean billowed in the branches above him like an absurd canopy. She also noticed that Naruto was nowhere to be seen.

"I don't think you understand what I'm asking," Shikamaru croaked. Hinata winced. His voice was so rough it sounded as though speaking was a painful endeavor. _What happened to him when those men attacked us? _She wondered. _The voice change, those red eyes—_(She shuddered, glad that it was too dark to see the grotesque red splotches in the whites of his eyes, even if Sakura insisted that they were "Just a couple of ruptured blood vessels—nothing to worry about.")—_somebody really tried to kill him._

Sakura ground her teeth. "No; _you _don't understand! Didn't you notice the way Kiba screamed when I healed him? I'm obviously doing something wrong and I don't know how to fix it. You could lose your voice permanently. Then what would you do? How would you lead us if you couldn't even talk? Since I'm so stupid, why don't you just go ahead and explain that to me!"

"Sakura—"

"You know what, Shikamaru? While you're at it, why don't you explain how you plan to get us to the Sand village? After all; you're the leader and you're the one who got us lost in the first place. Oh, wait, I'm sorry…you're so worried about your poor voice you can't be bothered to think about getting us out of this sand trap!"

Shikamaru clenched his jaw, and turned away from the quivering girl. Sakura took two jerky steps after him and then stopped to shout at his retreating back, "That's right, just ignore the problem! Who knows? Maybe it'll all just magically fix itself!"

When Shikamaru was nothing more than a shadow at the edge of her vision, he stopped. Without turning around, he rasped, "I didn't want you to heal me. I wanted you to look at Ino's ankle so we could move faster."

Hinata saw Sakura's eyes widen and a quiver passed across her face. Then a deep flush flared across her cheeks. Even though Shikamaru was out of sight, she screamed, "Yeah? Well thank you so much for _not _helping me with Sasuke, you lazy jerk!" That said, she took two deep breaths before sinking down to her knees and burying her burning face in her hands.

The pink-haired girl did not move for several seconds. With her face hidden from view and her body quivering, Hinata was sure that the other girl was crying. She was proven wrong when a phlegmy cough from Sasuke prompted the pink-haired girl to pull her hands away from her face. The fury smoldering in Sakura's eyes was so intense that Hinata instinctively shrank back into the shadows of the overhanging palms to avoid its wrath.

A second rasping cough caused Sakura's harsh mask of rage to soften. With a half-growled sigh, she rose to her feet, walked over to the ailing boy and knelt on the ground by his side. Hinata watched with a sense of awe as the pink-haired girl trying to coax Sasuke to drink a bit of water from a hollowed melon rind. Although she couldn't hear the other girl's words, the quiet, gentle tone of her voice was nothing like the angry growl she had addressed to Shikamaru only seconds earlier.

Hinata ducked out of her hiding place and started towards the two of them, only to come to a halt when the boy jerked away from the makeshift cup and whispered, "Mama?"

With trembling hands, Sakura placed the melon rind on the ground. "W—what?"

"M-mama," he repeated. "I'm sorry…sorry I b-broke the vase, mama. Please d-don't be mad at m-me…."

With a sense of unease, Hinata heard a slow, grief-laden sigh and watched Sakura push the boy's soaked bangs out of his face. It felt wrong to see the two of them in such a vulnerable state. She wondered whether it would be better to give the girl a few minutes of privacy to recover herself, but as she was turning to leave, a new thought occurred to her: _What about Neji? I don't want to make him wait…. _She stayed rooted to the spot, unable to choose between courtesy towards Sakura and fear for her cousin.

It was Sakura who made the decision for her when, without turning her attention away from the feverish Uchiha boy, she said, "Hinata, I know you're there. If you want to say something to me, say it or go away."

_How long has she known I was standing here? _Hinata wondered. _Did she see me when she was fighting with Shikamaru? _Even though she knew it made little difference either way, she hoped that the answer was 'no.' Aloud, she said, "Sakura, it's Neji. He's…he's sick."

Sakura jerked as though she had been burned and then looked back over her shoulder to the fidgeting Hyuuga girl. Taking a deep breath, she said, "How sick?"

"I don't know." A tight coil of fear stretched through her body. No longer able to distract herself with thoughts of crushes or Konoha, she had no choice but to confront her worry for her cousin head on. Her voice was a strained squeak as she whispered, "What if it's like…like…?" She trailed off with a nod in Sasuke's direction.

"Is he coughing? Vomiting? Does he have a rash?"

Hinata shook her head.

"What are his symptoms then?"

Unsure of how to reply, Hinata shook her head again. "Please…could you come and look at him…_please?"_

"I can't leave Sasuke by himself."  
"Oh…." Hinata turned as though to leave by the same route she had taken through the palms.

Sakura held up a hand. "Listen; I sent Naruto to get more water…he should be back any second. I'll go with you when he comes back. OK?"

Hinata nodded and sat down on the ground, barely comprehending the words. She felt as though her head was being squeezed in a vice. It was as though her worries for her cousin had been steam trapped inside a boiling pot. Now that she had said the words and removed the lid, the worries were roiling in an uncontrollable cloud in her head.

The wait for Naruto seemed terribly long. Under any other circumstances, she would have smiled as soon as the boy appeared and tried to scrape together the courage to say something more than "Hello" or "How are you?" Now, she was so preoccupied that she barely registered his boisterous arrival or the brief exchange of words between him and Sakura. The short trek back through the palms to the place where she had left Neji lying on the ground and in the care of Kiba and Akamaru passed in a confused blur. The next thing she remembered was kneeling on one side of her cousin while Sakura knelt on the other.

Hinata was relieved to notice that although Neji's breaths were coming in short, pained gasps, it didn't sound anything like the phlegm-choked rasping she had heard from Sasuke. Her relief was short-lived when she noticed a small, almost inaudible sound—something she had never expected to hear from her proud older cousin: a keening whine that sounded like an injured animal.

Sakura knelt beside the supine boy. His eyes opened half-way and Hinata was shocked to see tears—_real tears—_in his eyes, and then Sakura was saying, "Neji, what is it? What's the matter?"

"Something's wrong with his stomach," Kiba answered. "And it's not because he ate too many watermelons like Naruto did."

Neji raised himself into a half-sitting position to glare at the Inuzuka and then flopped back with a pained groan. "I can answer for myself," he growled. The indignant quality of his voice was undermined by a wavering undertone of restrained tears.

"Do you feel sick?"

"No." He squeezed his eyes closed and emitted a low groan before amending, "Yes. It _hurts."_

"Can you sit up?"

He made a move as though attempting to do as she had asked before answering, "No-o-o-uuugh…"

Hinata thought she saw something flicker across Sakura's eyes—a shadow of concern. "Where does it hurt, Neji?"

"I already told you; his stomach," Kiba sighed. "Weren't you listening?"

Sakura gave Kiba a withering look. "No; I meant _where _does it hurt…the middle? The side?"

Neji clenched his hands into fists and then unclenched them. Clench. Unclench. "At first it was the middle…."

"But now it's on the side, isn't it?" she queried. "The right side?"

He nodded.

Hinata saw the frightening shadow pass over Sakura's features again. "Sakura…w-what is it?"

Sakura shook her head and said, "Neji, I'm going to test something. Is that OK?"

He nodded and wiped a sweaty strand of hair out of his face. Hinata watched the girl run a hand over her cousin's lower abdomen with a sense of dread. It seemed as though the other girl was searching for something and that when she found it, the world as she knew it would come to an end. She held her breath as Sakura hesitated with her hand over his right side. Then the girl pressed down.

The response was immediate. Neji's eyes flew wide open and he _screamed._ Unable to stop herself, Hinata jumped and echoed his scream. She felt hands on her shoulders, steadying her as she began to shake—Kiba.

"I…I think I know what it is," Sakura whispered.

"Th-that's good," Hinata sighed, allowing a small smile to creep onto her face. "You can help him, right? Since you know what it is, you can…you can do something for him…right, Sakura?"

"Hinata, I think it's…." Sakura dropped her gaze down to the pained boy lying on the ground between them. Hinata felt as though something was squeezing around her chest, forcing her to hold her breath. She wanted to say something to break the spell, but all she could do was stare at Sakura while the other girl gulped as though trying to swallow back what she was about to say. "I think it's appendicitis."

* * *

**Author's Notes:** Wow. This chapter turned out very different from what I'd originally planned, but I like it better this way. Hopefully, the Hinata section wasn't too OOC. She's one of the most difficult characters for me to write. And now for something completely different: I'm in the process of moving to Japan for a year, which is very exciting, very terrifying, and extremely stressful. Since this is the last chapter that I had written in advance, updates might be coming a bit slower from now on. I'm still going to try and stick to at least one chapter a week, but I want to apologize in advance for the longer wait.

Thanks to ArjunaAnja, Risen dreams, LittleMana, Doxkid, and unreproachablephoenix for reviewing chapter 9. I love hearing what you all think of the story!


	11. Burnout

*CHAPTER ELEVEN*

The sun was a gilt-bronze smear as it sank towards the unreachable horizon of sloping dunes. It shivered with the day's residual heat waves curling up from the baked sand, rippling like a blob of watery paint. Shikamaru watched its descent with a sense of relief.

Another day of nonstop walking in the heat of the sun combined with the newly added weight of Ino on his back had reduced his knees and feet to throbbing, fiery knots. His back, shoulders, and arms were so tight it felt as though he would never be able to move them again. Every step brought a new jolt that stormed through his knees, wracked his hips, fanned up his back, and jangled in his head.

Even in the dusk of early evening, sweat was slicking down his body. He could feel the dribbles of sweat crawling down his chest to his bellybutton to drench the waistband of his pants. With Ino's added body heat, the back of his shirt was wet enough to pull against his skin with every step. The shoulder where the drowsing girl had rested her head was soaked and he wondered whether it was all sweat or whether she had drooled on him in her sleep. He was too tired to care.

Part of him—the part that wasn't swirling sickly with the haze of heat rolling in his head—wondered whether it would be better to stop and let Ino try walking on her own. He rejected the idea as soon as it entered his head. _She'd probably think I was trying to imply that she was fat and throw a fit, _he thought. _Besides, _he amended with a glance to Neji's limp form in Kiba's arms, _we're moving slowly enough as it is._

His eyes lingered on the ailing Hyuuga's form, watching and listening for any sign that his condition had changed in the hours they had been walking. Neji was quiet and absolutely still.

_Probably unconscious, _Shikamaru thought and although he _knew _it was anything but a good sign, he couldn't help but feel a sense of relief. It was easier on everybody when Neji was unconscious and his pained moans quieted. He imagined it was easier on Neji as well.

He remembered then, how they had all gathered around the boy's prone form as Sakura knelt to check his condition in the first white rays of dawn. At some point in the night, somebody—_Naruto, _thought Shikamaru, _It must have been Naruto—_had carried Sasuke from the place where Sakura had been tending to him and lain him down at the base of a nearby palm tree. The Uchiha's thick rasping was the only sound as Sakura reached for the hem of Neji's shirt.

There was a low moan of pain as Sakura folded back the shirt. From his vantage point, Shikamaru could see nothing of Sakura's expression or of the area that she was examining, but the way her shoulders sagged was indication enough that Neji's condition had grown worse.

His eyes moved to Hinata, perched on Neji's left and he felt something twist in the pit of his stomach at the way she stared back without appearing to _see _him or Sakura or her cousin or anything else at all. The skin under her eyes looked gray and Shikamaru wondered if she had stayed awake all night perched at Neji's side as she was now.

Watching the girl stare into space, the spitefully logical side of his mind thought, _With Hinata like this that only leaves me, Sakura, and Naruto as viable fighters if anything comes up. _It was a thought that made him feel as though he had been scraped hollow from the inside out. It was the reason he could feel a tiny flick of relief when Sakura let Neji's shirt flop back into place and the boy let loose a scream that sent a chill down his spine—because that horrible scream had been enough to make Hinata stumble back and replace the slack, faraway expression on her face with one of fear, pain, and _awareness._

Neji's throat-scarring scream was still ringing in Shikamaru's ears when Kiba cleared his throat and hoarsely said, "Sakura, do you think…maybe…if we gave him some of my soldier pills it would help with the pain?"

Sakura was quiet for so long that Shikamaru began to suspect that she wasn't going to answer at all. Then there was a sharp, hacking cough from Sasuke's sweaty bundle of sheets and she flinched as though the sound had hit her like a kunai through the chest. She slowly shook her head and said, "I don't know. I—I'm almost sure it's appendicitis. I don't like the idea of altering his chakra levels when he's like this…it could make things a lot worse than they already are."

Hinata's voice was nothing more than a strained squeak. "C-can you help him?"

"If I'm right he needs his appendix removed," Sakura whispered. "We need to get him to the Sand village, and we need to do it before his appendix bursts."

There was an ugly silence following this last remark. Nobody had dared to ask what would happen if they didn't reach the Sand Village in time. Finally, Naruto had said, "Well I guess that means we'd better get going then."

It hadn't taken long to gather their meager supplies together. Somehow, without any words being passed between them it was decided that Shikamaru would take Neji's place carrying Ino while Naruto carried Sasuke _(How on earth was he still alive?) _and Kiba carried Neji _(We're in such bad shape now our wounded have to carry our sick)._ Then they were walking, walking, walking for hours on end, until the only thing that existed was step after step after step…. And all the while the hot sun crept higher and higher in the sky, glaring down on them like a giant, yellow, scorching eye.

There was something on the horizon—a black blob that seemed to shimmer and sway with the sunset's rising waves of heat. Shikamaru registered the fact as a sudden jolt through the hypnotic, swirling haze that was twisting in his head. He stared at the silhouetted form for several seconds before recognizing what it was. Walls, roof—some type of shelter. _An outpost, _he thought, and the word brought with it a vivid snatch of memory.

_His father had just returned from a mission. He was sitting at the table and drinking a cup of black coffee. Shikamaru was at the other end of the table, eating a piece of peanut butter toast. The peanut butter was so warm it was running up over his fingers and dripping onto the table in a sticky mess. He was too young to enter the Academy yet, but old enough to know his mother would have a conniption once she discovered the mess._

_His mother was too busy to notice. Instead, she was at the other end of the table with his father, cleaning a set of ugly gashes on his arm that Shikamaru thought must have come from a pair of shuriken. "You were gone so long the Hokage was ready to engrave your names on the monument," she said._

"_Hmph. Don't blame me," his father grunted. "It was Inoichi's damn fool idea—ow!" He sent his wife a sour look and muttered, "You don't have to rip my arm off, you know."_

_Shikamaru took another bite of toast but didn't miss the curt nod his mother tipped in his direction. His father sighed before amending, "It was Inoichi's stupid idea to cut through the desert to lose the Rock nin. It's a good thing we ran across that old Sand outpost or we'd probably still be wandering around lost in that sandbox."_

It had been several years before Shikamaru entered the Academy and learned the significance behind his father's words. He remembered that lesson well—it had happened to fall on the rare occasion that he did not nap through the afternoon history class. He could even remember Iruka's voice saying, _"The Sand built several outposts in the desert during the Third Ninja War in order to provide their spies with supplies. They were all abandoned after the war, but most of them are still standing today. If any of you ever end up going to the Sand village, you'll probably see some of them, because they are all located on the edge of the desert closest to Konoha."_

He turned his attention back to the black blob on the horizon. They were close enough now that even without Hyuuga eyes there was no denying that its abandoned, decrepit appearance matched Iruka's descriptions. _I've led us in a circle, _he realized. _We're right back where we started._

The thought sent a stabbing chill through him in spite of the heat. An idea—a horrible, dangerous, stupid idea that had been hovering at the edge of his mind since dawn—crashed into the center of his train of thought. He had spent the day trying to think of anything besides that terrible idea, and he suspected that everybody else had done the same. _We can't avoid it anymore, _he thought. _Not now that I know how far we are from the Sand village._

With a resigned sigh, he trudged to the back of the group, where Sakura was walking with her sunburned arms hugged up across her chest. She watched his approach with exhausted but shrewd eyes. He saw the edges of her mouth pull into a frown when he arrived at her side, but she said nothing.

_I guess I should try to start with the positive, _he thought. Aloud, he said, "I know where we are."

"So do I."

He winced. The three words had been spoken with a harsh edge to them that cut deeper than any kunai. _What did I expect? _He thought. _She got the top score on every history exam we ever took in the Academy. _"So…now that you know the situation, what do you think is best?"

Sakura came to such an abrupt halt he almost stumbled into her. He felt Ino stir in her sleep and she mumbled something unintelligible before resting her head back on his shoulder. When he regained his balance, the first thing he noticed was Sakura's eyes boring into him with such rage it seemed as though he could feel it rolling off her in sharp waves. In spite of her fury, her voice was low and almost sweet as she said, "What do you mean, Shikamaru?"

"You know what I mean. Do you think it would be best to—"

"No. No, no, no—a hundred, thousand times no." She lowered her voice to a hiss before adding, "I trained with Tsunade for a month. The most I ever did was hook up an IV. I'd kill him."

"How long until his appendix bursts?"

"Not long enough to make it to the Sand village. Not from here."

"Will he die without the operation?"

There was long pause. Then: "Yes. Probably. Yes."

"Then he needs it now. Sakura, you know you're the most qualified out of all of us. You have to at least try—"

"I already said _no! _I can't do it—I can't do _anything!_ Just leave me alone!"

Sakura looked as though she wanted to say something more, but at that moment, a quiet, shaking voice said, "Sakura, _please."_

The voice was so strained Shikamaru had difficulty recognizing it, but he immediately knew who it had come from all the same. He wondered vaguely how long it had taken the others to realize that they had stopped. _How long were they listening?_ He wondered. _How long was Neji awake? _The idea that Neji could have heard the conversation in its entirety before he had chosen to interrupt sent an uncomfortable shudder down Shikamaru's back.

Sakura had turned her attention away from him to address the ill boy lying in Kiba's arms. "I can't," she said. "I'm not a med-nin—I'm not!"

There was a long silence. Shikamaru could see Naruto darting his eyes from the shed on the horizon, to Sasuke's sheet-swaddled form dangling between the shadow clones, to the sand at his feet—anywhere but to Sakura's stricken face. Hinata stood between Naruto and Kiba, but unlike Naruto, she seemed unable to tear her eyes away from the pink-haired girl, staring at her with a painful mix of grief and pleading. Finally, Neji said, "That's OK. Please—I want you to try. Please try."

Shikamaru winced. It seemed dirty to hear a fellow ninja beg; especially one as disciplined as the ever-stoic Hyuuga. Sakura took a step back as though the words had possessed their own physical power. "I don't know what I'm doing," she croaked. "You'd die. Just hold on until we get to the Sand village and—"

"You know I'm not going to make it that far." He twisted in Kiba's arms as though attempting to sit up but went limp with an agonized cry. When he spoke again it was in nothing more than a painful warble. "Please, Sakura, just _try."_

Sakura's face scrunched into a grimace. Shikamaru saw her clench her hands into fists so tight her knuckles went white and for the barest instant, he wondered if she was about to hit him. Then she sighed and deflated into a defeated slump.

"OK," she whispered. "If there are medical supplies at the outpost, I'll try."

* * *

There had been medical supplies. Of course there had been medical supplies. The Sand would never have left its spies without access to medical supplies. Scalpels. Disinfectant. Sutures. Even a mild anesthetic. The anesthetic was a godsend. There were other supplies, too. Weapons. Food, too. Boxes of stale crackers. Plastic jugs of water that tasted like old chlorine. Everyone could have sat around the tiny table and choked down just enough dry crackers to tease their appetites, if the table hadn't been occupied by the task at hand.

A bead of sweat trembled at the end of Sakura's chin like a greasy teardrop. She could feel it quivering there, threatening to fall. "Wipe," she said. A hand—_Ino's? Kiba's?—_wrapped in a white hanky swiped at her chin, taking the sweat with it.

She was too afraid to tear her eyes away from the task at hand to look and see who had wiped her chin. As long as she kept her eyes trained on the area she was working with, it was easy to pretend that it was somebody she had never met; a nameless, faceless cadaver that couldn't possibly die or feel pain.

Opening the skin and the underlying cutaneous tissues had been surprisingly easy. She had felt calm, almost relaxed as she had made those first shallow incisions. It was the next cut that scared her; the cut that would put her inside the lining of the abdominal cavity. No matter how many times she tried to tell herself that it was "just another incision," she could not subdue an overwhelming feeling that she was teetering at the point of no return.

Her fingers trembled around the scalpel's grip. She could feel another blob of sweat crawling down her jaw. _I could still close it back up, _she thought. _Kiba's wounds were about this deep. It wouldn't be hard._ She cut.

It was then that she noticed the warm, slippery feel of blood through the thin surgical gloves on her hands. She wondered why she hadn't noticed it before. There must have been blood when she cut through the skin and its underlying tissues. She could see it smeared up past her wrists, but somehow, she had not noticed it until then.

She stared into the incision and felt a dull edge of panic fuzz her consciousness. Pink. Orange. Brown. Yellow. Red. So many colors she didn't know what they could mean. It was so different from the prim and precise anatomy books she had perused under Tsunade's tutelage. _What am I even looking for? _She thought. _How will I know it when I see it?_

She looked back to the incision. A pair of white-gloved hands was holding it open with a set of clamps. _Whose hands? _she thought. _My hands? _She shook her head. _No; my hands have blood on them. Those are clean._ Who had she asked to hold the clamps? She couldn't remember asking anybody to do it. Had she done it just now?

There was a rough scrape of fabric against the side of her face. She felt new sweat dribble in to replace the old even as Naruto's—_Shikamaru's? Hinata's—_cloth-covered hand wiped at it. The cold of the sweat against her sun-scorched cheeks was enough to bring her back. She pushed her hands inside.

Something sticky was on her arms—more blood, smeared halfway up to her elbows now. The gloves were so soaked they clung against her hands like a second skin. She heard a voice, but it was so far away she couldn't tell who it had come from or make out any of the words. Then her breath caught in her throat and she heard herself gasping, "I found it, I found it."

A half-whispered giggle snorted through her nose. "Self-containing tube, near the top of the large intestine, about as big around as the pinky finger—this has to be it. Somebody give me the scissors."

Somebody was moving behind her, but so slowly. Without taking her eyes off the incision, she snapped, "Hurry up and give me the scissors!"

A set of hands—_no gloves, _she noticed, _no hanky—_came down to rest on her shoulders. Then Naruto's voice was saying, "Sakura, he's already dead."

Sakura shook her head. "No, no—it didn't burst yet. It didn't…it's OK. Just give me the scissors!"

"Sakura…."

She pulled her attention away from the pink-orange-brown-yellow-red incision to look at the people surrounding the makeshift operating table. None of them would look at her. She felt Naruto's hands give her shoulders a light squeeze.

"But I _found _it," she sobbed. But even as the words left her mouth in a half-plea, she noticed the absolute stillness of the Hyuuga's body. No breathing. No chakra flow. She could feel a dull pulse of circulation and warmth through the gloves, but it was sluggish; a residual caricature of the life that had already gone.

She wanted to scream. Her body wanted to cry; she could feel the sobs in her chest, but her throat was too tight to push them out. The world was spinning around her as she pulled her hands out of the incision. Across the table, she saw Shikamaru turning to face her as though moving in slow motion. She saw him opening his mouth to speak and she realized that she did not want to hear what he or anybody else was about to say.

Without another second's thought she jerked her shoulders free of Naruto's hands, turned away from the table, and ran as fast as she could go.

* * *

It was cold. Even huddled in her heavy jacket with the extra bulk of three thick blankets from one of the various boxes of supplies that littered the floor of the abandoned shack, Hinata couldn't stop shivering.

It was quiet. So different from the chaos that had erupted after the disastrous surgery attempt. Hinata didn't know who had started the explosive argument after Sakura disappeared into the cold desert night. She couldn't remember anything of what had been said, let alone who had said what. She remembered Naruto punching Kiba—_or had it been Kiba punching Naruto?—_before the two had gotten into an all-out fistfight that hadn't ended until Ino and Shikamaru separated them—an effort that had earned Shikamaru a bloody nose. There had been more yelling after that, some of which had had Ino in tears, but Hinata hadn't watched much beyond the end of Kiba and Naruto's fight. The last thing she'd seen before creeping off into a back room and covering her ears was Shikamaru pulling a filthy sheet up to cover Neji's body.

She was so tired. There was a crack in the dilapidated wall behind her. She could feel cold tendrils of night air creep down the back of her neck with every breath of wind, but she was too tired to move. It felt good to have the solid wall behind her. Safe.

A set of running footsteps alerted her to the fact that she was no longer alone. She glanced towards the door just in time to see Naruto burst into the room, a frantic expression on his face. She watched him stop in the doorway, whipping his head left-right-left, let out a frustrated growl, and half-turn to go back the way he'd come before he looked to where she sat in the corner.

"Hinata," he whispered.

She was ashamed by how good it felt to hear him say her name, even through the thick, numbing grief. It felt dirty to think of her crush now, like an appalling lack of respect for Neji. _Disgraceful. Failure. An embarrassment to us all._

"Have you seen Sakura anywhere?"

Hinata frowned. "What?"

"Sakura. Nobody's seen her since…well, I mean, we've all been looking for her but nobody can find her. Did you see her come through here?"

The urge to cry at his words—_shameful, disgusting—_was so strong she could only mutely shake her head. Naruto raked a hand through his hair with a groan before racing out of the room as quickly as he had entered.

Hinata pulled her knees up to her chest and curled into a tight ball. _How could I be so selfish? How can I think of a stupid crush when things have gotten this bad? How can I think of that when Neji's…._

She pulled her legs tighter against her body. _I wish I could just disappear, _she thought. _I'm horrible, just like the clan elders always said I was. Hopeless, weak, useless, failure—_

"Hinata?"

"Na—Kiba," she hastily corrected herself, realizing that it was her teammate and his canine partner who were standing in front of her now.

"You OK?"

She wanted to say yes. _Just say it, _she thought. _Don't make him worry. Don't hold back your teammate. Just say yes._ The single, simple syllable refused to come. She lowered her head until her face was hidden by her knees.

"Hinata?"

She heard him sit on the floor in front of her with a grunt. She didn't want to look up and face him, but then Akamaru was nuzzling one of her hands with his cold, wet nose and it was a knee-jerk reaction for her to scratch the pup's ears, just as she had done so many times before, and before she knew what she was doing she found herself face to face with her teammate.

"Shouldn't you be looking for Sakura?" The bitter words had come without thought and she regretted them the instant they were out of her mouth. _Selfish, _she thought. _What's the matter with me?_

He shrugged. "I can still smell her, so she's not too far away. Besides, I'm more worried about you."

"W-why?"

"Because you're my friend. And my teammate. And Neji was your cousin. That's why."

"Oh."

They sat for a very long time without speaking. Hinata continued to stroke Akamaru's soft ears; a mechanical, repetitive gesture. The small pup offered an occasional lick to her fingers for the favor. It was a familiar silence. It reminded her of the way they would sometimes sit together—her and Kiba and Akamaru and Shino and sometimes Kurenai _(She missed Shino. She missed Kurenai. She missed them so much)—_after a day of hard training in the summertime. Everybody too hot and tired to speak, but content. Finally, she said, "How are your wounds? Do they still hurt?"

"No; not much. They're OK."

"That's good." She paused, chewing her lip and hovering between telling him how badly she missed their teammate and sensei and how badly it hurt to lose the last of her family and how sick, how horrible, how _wrong _it was that they were going to have to bury him without a proper grave out in the middle of the awful wasteland they'd been wandering in. She managed to squeak out the word "I" past the lump in her throat before his arms were around her shoulders in a hug.

She tensed against the unexpected sensation of his arms around her and then let her head rest against his chest. If she held her breath, she could hear his heartbeat. It was a reassuring pulse.

"If you're tired, you should try to get some sleep," he said. With her head against his body, his voice was a rumble in his chest.

_I should tell him to go find Sakura so everyone can stop worrying, _she thought. She tried to summon up the energy to say the words, but the steady rhythm of his heartbeat and the warmth of his arms around her had a lulling effect and her eyes felt heavy. She didn't even have the energy to mumble a drowsy thanks before she was asleep.

* * *

Ino's ankle throbbed as she hobbled back towards the dark silhouette of the outpost. She knew it had been stupid to wander off to look for Sakura alone. She knew it was stupider still to leave the rundown hut without even leaving note or telling anybody where she was going. It went without saying that it was even more ridiculously stupid to do so on an ankle that threatened to buckle with every step she took on the uneven sand. Even so, she was very glad that she had not heeded Shikamaru's advice to "Just wait here while Naruto and I look" when she stumbled across the pink haired girl perched on a rock with her arms hugged over her chest and staring up at the star-speckled sky.

Ino cleared her throat, waiting to see if Sakura would speak first, but the other girl didn't even look in her direction. Instead, she slowly peeled off the blood-crusted pair of surgical gloves and laid them in front of her on the rock like a pair of cast off skins.

"You know, billboard brow, everybody's all up in arms looking for you," Ino said, taking a step closer to the rock. "If you're not careful I'll start getting jealous about all that attention you're getting."

Sakura did not reply. Ino frowned. She took another hobbling step forward to stand directly in front of her friend and saw an empty long-necked bottle lying on the stone beside the other girl. _What is that—a wine bottle? It IS a wine bottle…where did she get that? Back at the outpost?_

"Did you drink that?" Ino demanded.

Whether it was the sharp edge Ino had injected into the words or whether it was from the sheer unexpectedness of the question, Sakura jumped and looked at Ino as though only now realizing that she was there. Hands shaking, she picked up the bottle beside her and croaked, "This?"

"Yeah. Did you drink it?"

Sakura sniffled thickly before replying, "No. I w-wanted to, but it tasted so bad…. I—I dumped it out."

"You dumped it out?"

"Y-yeah."

Ino tried to stifle the laughter she felt bubbling in her chest, but it forced its way out of her mouth before she could do anything to stop it. She didn't know whether she was laughing more from relief or from the sheer absurdity of the situation, but it felt good to laugh. Over her own laughter, she could hear Sakura give a hoarse giggle and when she stopped, she felt cleaner than she had felt in days.

Sakura's laughter faded first, dying off into a shaking sigh as a fat tear dribbled from the corner of her right eye. "I was so _close," _she whispered. "If I'd have been just—just a little quicker…just a little bit _better…."_

"Sakura…."

Sakura sniffed back another thick snort. "It's not fair. I mean, appendicitis is supposed to be nothing, right? People don't…they don't _die _from appendicitis."

"Sakura—"

"I just can't help thinking that maybe if I'd have worked just a little harder when I was studying with Tsunade I might have been able to save him, you know? I mean, I was _so close _and—"

"Sakura!" The pink-haired girl trailed off with a hiccough. Ino took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and said, "What you did back there…it was what he wanted you to do. And you were so brave."

"But I killed—"

"You were trying to save him."

"But I _killed _him!" Ino felt a shudder go down her spine at the raw pain she had heard in her friend's voice. Slowly she reached out and put a hand on the other girl's hunched shoulder. When Sakura spoke again, her voice was a choked whisper: "I just keep wondering what if I was wrong? What if it wasn't appendicitis? Or what if we'd have waited and he'd made it to the Sand village?"

"You're going to kill yourself if you keep wondering 'what if,' Sakura." She felt Sakura's shoulder give a shudder under her hand, but there was no accompanying sob. Emboldened, Ino went on: "He knew what was probably going to happen, but he asked you to do it anyway. You tried your best."  
"And my best wasn't good enough."

"Well it was a hell of a lot more than anything me or Shikamaru or anybody else could have done. More than we could have even _thought_ about doing. I wasn't kidding when I said I thought it you were brave. Really, it was one of the bravest things I've ever seen anybody do."

"R-really?"

"Yes, really."

Sakura stared at the dirty surgical gloves lying on the rock in front of her for a long time without saying anything. Finally, she said, "Go back, Ino."

"Will you come with me?"

"I…I just need a little time alone. Tell the others I'm OK. And that I'm sorry for making them worry. I'll come back before the sun comes up. I promise."

Ino studied her friend's face for any sign that the other girl wasn't being entirely truthful. When she was satisfied, she nodded, gave Sakura's shoulder another squeeze and began to hobble back in the direction of the hut. She had only taken a few steps when she heard Sakura say, "Thanks, Ino-pig."

Ino smiled. "Any time, billboard brow. Any time."

* * *

**Author's Notes:** Wow. I am a horrible person. I make everybody wait half a year for an update…and then I kill Neji. For the records, I want to say that I am very sorry that it took me this long to update (especially after I promised weekly updates—how embarrassing!). Living in Japan is cool, but there have been a lot of bumps along the way. I'm hoping to get the next update out within a more reasonable time frame. That being said, I had a very hard time writing this chapter. I hope there are a few misty eyes out there because I sure got choked up writing this one. Also, I hope that Naruto didn't come off as too callous in the Hinata scene. I love the blonde-haired idiot, and it wasn't my intention to make him look like a jerk. It just seems to me that Sakura would take precedence over Hinata in Naruto's eyes in that situation, especially in part one. Whew. Here's hoping I don't get too many flames for what I did to…well, pretty much everyone this chapter.

A big thanks to unreproachablepheonix, ArjunaAnja, LittleMana, Starlight-Wild Koneko, BlackOnyx83, Falconeyes, SailorFrance, Exile Wing, maudlinthemad, Fredryck, InARealPickle, and SakuraxSasuke121 for all of your reviews. Also, thanks to everyone who has added this to your favorites, watch lists, and C2's. I hope this chapter satisfied you all.

**Next time: The good news—our straggling band of survivors finally reaches the Sand village. The bad news—oh dear….**


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